La Bête: A Modern Tale
Since 2012, Yasmina Benabderrahmane has been travelling across like a waking dream, the sand dunes and plains of her native country, which after fourteen years of absence she attempts to reclaim through images.
This is a story between two worlds: yesterday’s Morocco, with raw materials at ground and body level, and today’s Morocco, in concrete and rock: In the Bouregreg Valley, a few kilometers 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 Mountains 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 El-Kebir.
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.)