Selected Exhibitions

Sortir du livre
Curated by Suspended Spaces

With Basma Alsharif / Ziad Antar / Leonor Antunes / Marwa Arsanios / Kader Attia / Bertille Bak /François Bellenger / Filip Berte / Marcel Dinahet / Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh / Maïder Fortuné /Lamia Joreige / Valérie Jouve / Jan Kopp / Yannis Kyriakides / Bertrand Lamarche / Lia Lapithi/ Daniel Lê / Armin Linke / André Parente / Françoise Parfait / Sophie Ristelhueber / Tania Ruiz / Mira Sanders / Stéphane Thidet / Eric Valette / Christophe Viart / Mehmet Yashin

The collective Suspended spaces brings together artists and researchers to do work based on geographical territories that are fragile, neglected by modernity. Established after the experience of Famagusta, a Cypriot ghost town, our group of variable geometry was invited to move in Lebanon and more particularly in Tripoli, on the site of the uncompleted International Fair of Oscar Niemeyer, then in Brazil where a new work was started. The modern districts of the city of Famagusta, Cyprus, were emptied of their inhabitants by Turkish military intervention in 1974, and remained entirely empty and inaccessible until today. The construction site of the Rachid Karamé International Fair in Tripoli was interrupted by the civil war in 1975, and remains since in its almost completed state but without use, closed to the public although in the heart of the city. MAC-Niterói and Macquinho are working with the neighboring favela community within a violent and divided Brazilian society. At each of these stages, we were invited to share with our hosts the experience of particularly fragile spaces, marked by conflicts, difficult or precarious living conditions, giving rise to residences, works, meetings, exhibitions, symposia , publications. In response to the invitation to exhibit at Mains d’OEuvres, we wanted to come back, for the first time, to all the artistic works produced as part of the Suspended spaces project since 2007. And if it is impossible to exhibit them all, this new step allows us to reinterpret some. The exhibition ‘Sortir du Livre’ is not a summary of our activities, but a new way of presenting these projects, of putting them in relation, with distance and curiosity. An experiment that weaves lines between works, draws axes and articulates perspectives. For this, we will strive to change scale, change format. Works produced over past exhibitions will be presented on a smaller scale, like models. Some artistic creations previously printed in books (such as portfolios), will be further developed, either by presenting the originals, or by proposing an “exhibition ” version, enlarged, reformulated, enriched.

We propose to leave the book to focus on the works; to leave the book to extend or replay the pages entrusted to artists in our publications; to go out of the book in order to display research in a different manner. This change of scale invites to an unprecedented experience of the artistic productions through readings, confrontations, new connections. “Sortir du Livre” also puts the three publications a the center of the exhibition. The gallery space will be divided into three geographical territories: Cyprus, Lebanon and Brazil. We have also invited some new artists whose works echo our research.