The artwork of Amina Benbouchta questions our relation to the world, in one of the most sensible ways. Through a problematic of deconstruction and fragmentation of the real, painting becomes the revelator of our intimate territories, for after painting, only the essential part remains. In its simplicity, each object is freed from itself; the flower is not in the vase that is not on the table. So is it, still, a table that we are looking at?
When such objects are painted, they become like a container, a branch or a box; they refer to the real, but they play the role of a presence that stands between transparency and opacity, between fusion and disappearance, an interplay of the above and below. Continuous, discontinuous, large, tapered, heavy, light, the movement of the fluid line is permanent, thusly preventing the latter from fixing itself, and opening all the fields of possibilities. So, is representation still possible?
The work of Amina Benbouchta is all about the eagerness to suspend the fleeting of time, by a refined use of the most traditional painting tools. The artist engages in an act of painting that breaks up with the established order.
And then there is the word. Engraved or painted, legible or illegible, truncated or “unwritten”, the word amplifies the rupture that painting creates, as it inscribes its own disturbing movement, diverting the viewer from the path they thought they had found, blurring the message they thought they had deciphered.
Her manipulation of space consists of the utilization of a multiplicity of perspectives to create presences that make the eye questions what it sees.
These presences oblige one to pass through the mirror, a crossing during which every sign and every color application is reassuring. In fact, wonder joins the primary concern of the artist, i.e. to take the image back to the imaginary.
About the exhibition
• Interview of Amina Benbouchta with Florence Darsi
Press
• “L’impossible représentation dans l’oeuvre d’Amina Benbouchta” in La Gazette du Maroc
• “Visions plurielles à l’unisson” in Maroc Soir
• “Amina Benbouchta à Rabat” in Ousra magazine
• “Amina Benbouchta, la représentation impossible” in L’Opinion
• “Amina Benbouchta” in Exit UrbanGuide
• “Amina Benbouchta expose” in Aujourd’hui le Maroc
Impossible représentation
