La Bête, A modern Tale by Yasmina Benabderrahmane

Young Creators Exhibitions
From january 15th to august 23rd, 2020
  • Vue de l'exposition La Bête, un conte moderne de Yasmina Benabderrahmane

    Marc Domage

  • Khôl / La Bête, un conte moderne

    Yasmina Benabderrahmane / ADAGP, Paris, 2020

  • Pneuma / La Bête, un conte moderne

    Yasmina Benabderrahmane / ADAGP, Paris, 2020

  • Vue de l'exposition La Bête, un conte moderne de Yasmina Benabderrahmane

    Marc Domage

  • La Bête / La Bête, un conte moderne

    Yasmina Benabderrahmane / ADAGP, Paris, 2020

  • Couvrir / La Bête, un conte moderne

    Yasmina Benabderrahmane / ADAGP, Paris, 2020

  • Vue de l'exposition La Bête, un conte moderne de Yasmina Benabderrahmane

    Marc Domage

  • Danse / La Bête, un conte moderne

    Yasmina Benabderrahmane / ADAGP, Paris, 2020

Yasmina Benabderrahmane is the winner of the BAL AWARD FOR YOUNG CREATION WITH THE ADAGP 2019. The purpose of this prize is to accompany for two years the realisation of a creative project that falls within the broad spectrum of the image-documentary, fixed and moving, questioning our human experience. La Bête, A modern Tale by Yasmina Benabderrahmane will be presented at LE BAL from January 15th to April 12th, 2020. A book co-published by MACK and LE BAL accompanies the exhibition.

This is a story between two shores: yesterday’s Morocco, with raw materials at ground and body level, and today’s Morocco, in concrete and rock. Since 2012, Yasmina Benabderrahmane has been travelling across the sand dunes and plains of her native country, which after fourteen years of absence she attemps to reclaim through a visual language.

In the Bouregreg Valley, a few kilometres from Rabat, a new cultural centre, theatre and archaeological museum are being built, a colossal project instigated by the King that resembles a crouching beast, a figure of modernity eating away at the landscape and gradually altering the physiognomy of an ancestral country. The “Beast” does not sleep, it expands, snores, and settles into the landscape, growing larger day after day, imposing its shell-like architecture.
Further on, lie the rough, deserted, bare plains of Chichaoua, in the Atlas Moutains where traditions are passed on from one generation to another in dead calm villages, and where tales told in soft voices bring families together during the celebration of Eid Al-Adha.

Yasmina Benabderrahmane invites us to follow the winding paths between these two worlds. Her work is inhabited by her family history, between metaphor and raw fragments. First of all, there is the Uncle, a geologist responsible for the “Beast” in the Bouregreg Valley, guarantor of the earth and memory. A little further on, there is the Grandmother in Chichaoua, who manages time and weaves customs, from henna to the viscera.

In these familiar spaces and bodies where the unsettled history of contemporary Morocco plays out, Yasmina Benabderrahmane focuses on details and textures, and on hands that shape, enact and reproduce the same gestures over and over, throughout the course of time. In the halting upheavals of film, Yasmina Benabderrahmane’s work leads us to a sensitive, mineral, instinctive vision of Moroccan history, with dripping stones and coagulated blood, and where the artist’s gaze is posed upon the intimacy of passing time.

— Adrien Genoudet, co-curator

Biographies

Adrien Genoudet is a writer, filmmaker and researcher in visual history. He holds a doctorate in arts and cinema after having defended in 2018 a thesis entitled L'effervescence des images: les Archives de la Planète d'Albert Kahn (The effervescence of images: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet). He was a temporary teaching and research attaché (ATER) at the Collège de France, attached to the chair of Patrick Boucheron. He teaches at Sciences Po Paris and at the École Européenne Supérieure de l'Image (ÉESI). He has published, among others, in 2015 the essay Dessiner l'histoire, pour une histoire visuelle and in 2017 a novel, L'Etreinte. He is the author of several short and feature films presented in festivals and arts centres. Since October 2018, he has been editor-in-chief of the magazine Entre-Temps (https://entre-temps.net/).

Read more

Curators : Diane Dufour and Adrien Genoudet.

On the occasion of the exhibition, MACK BOOKS and LE BAL co-published the book La Bête, A modern Tale by Yasmina Benabderrahmane .

LE BAL AWARD FOR YOUNG CREATION  is organized with the support of logo_ministere_culture.jpg

The project received support from the Cercle des 100 Amis mécènes du BAL and by :

logo copie privée   logo ADAGP   

LE BAL receives support from La Ville de Paris and Conseil Régional d'Île-de-France.

Technical advice: WHATSIT

Media partners : Artpress, France Culturei-D Magazine, L’Œil de la PhotographiePolka MagazineSlash/,  Mouvement.

Share

Related

Clément Cogitore

Braguino or the impossible community

September 15 - December 23, 2017

4 special mentions of the jury

LE BAL AWARD FOR YOUNG ARTISTS WITH THE ADAGP

MACHINE VISION, MACHINE HEARING. SURVEILLANCE, SIMULATION, SPECULATION.

Research cycle organized by Université Gustave Eiffel – Paris Est, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure and LE BAL.

Thursdays, January 23rd, February 6th and 27th, June 4th at 8pm

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LANDSCAPES / NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS AND ENVIRONMENTS IN THE AGE OF ALGORITHMS

PROJECTIONS AND MEETINGS with Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka - RESEARCH CYCLE MACHINE VISION, MACHINE HEARING. SURVEILLANCE, SIMULATION, SPECULATION

Thursday, February 27th - 8pm

FROM ARTIFICIAL SOUL TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / MACHINE VISION AND SOVEREIGNTY

PROJECTION AND MEETING WITH JOSHUA SIMON AND ZACHARY FORMWALT - CYCLE MACHINE VISION, MACHINE HEARING. SURVEILLANCE, SIMULATION, SPECULATION

Thursday, February 6th 2020 - 8pm

Thinking machines

PROJECTION AND MEETING WITH ANTHONY MASURE AND ALEXIA MATHIEU - RESEARCH CYCLE MACHINE VISION, MACHINE HEARING. SURVEILLANCE, SIMULATION, SPECULATION

Thursday, January 23rd 2020 - 8pm

Go further