How Latifa Echakhch speaks of integrity, through the installation piece 'A Chaque Stencil Une Revolution'.
"No letters and advocations are going to fall from the blue walls. But, by all means, they don't need to. For all the tones of color and pigments that the artist revealed, I hope there is still sovereignty and ethics running in our human DNA."
Having been a day-dreamer, I have been striving to cope with reality. Art has been a gateway to a wonderland- but not of folies or clusters of ideas. No matter how unrealistic artists may seam, they can discern beauty under all auspices. Often, I rush to read about artists, as I am convinced that it is a way to pursue authentic meaning.
The image below is a picture of the work 'A Chaque Stencil Une Revolution' that Latifa Echakhch created to speak in favour of activism, politics and humanity. The installation was presented in 2014 in the exhibition 'The Illusion of Light' in Palazzo Grassi – François Pinault Foundation, in Venice, Italy. Entering the room that Echakhch's installation occupied, it felt like a water stream of colour was breaking in.
For the installation 'A Chaque Stencil Une Revolution' Latifa Echakhch covered the walls with carbon papers. Along the walls, at the height her hand reached when she extended it, she poured alcohol to wash off the ink from the carbon papers. At last, the drops of alcohol reached the floor.
Through the installation, Latifa Echakhch unveils the 'benign' meanings that everyday objects carry, and which we forget or dismiss. Despite the application of the material, by pouring spirit over the carbons, Eckachkch forces the viewers to confront the undercurrent beauty of the material; its texture and colour. But before anything else, the stencils reference the time when people employed the same material and manually reproduced flyers to protest.
Like a mechanism that alludes to the revolutionary spirit of the 60s, the title recalls the speech of Yasser Arafat -the 1st president of the Palestinian National Authority. It was during the 60s that people passionately fought for sovereignty and human rights. They upheld their political consciousness because it was tightly connected with their personal integrity. In May 68 and the riots against the war in Vietnam, people crafted the posters with the same kind of carbon papers that the artist applied on the walls, or with stencils ('A chaque Stencil', n.d).
In 'A Chaque Stencil Une Revolution', Echakhch masters the art of installation and provokes the viewers with the power of colour and scale to think of the violence in politics and everyday life. Maybe no letters and advocations are going to fall from the blue walls. But, by all means, they don't need to. For all the tones of colour and pigments that the artist revealed, I hope there is still sovereignty and ethics running in our human DNA.
A chaque stencil une revolution. (n.d.). https://www.macba.cat/en/art-artists/artists/echakhch-latifa/chaque-stencil-une-revolution