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French Institute of Casablanca
Gallery 121
July 2002
 

Series of 16 portraits
Photo credit: Studio Rachid, Maârif-Casablanca
Installation of objects: Florence Renault
 

The idea of ​​presenting, like a cabinet of curiosities, the objects chosen by the families to accompany their portrait, was born in the artist's studio. Over the days and the shots, the objects took their place on a table, just placed, without any arrangement. Moved from their everyday life to my own place of life, they then took on another dimension... Each day enriched by a new element, this draft installation took on the appearance of a collection, a heterogeneous and somewhat strange collection, arousing both curiosity and respect. All these objects, down to the most modest, functional and everyday, are objects of culture. At the same time, their diversity and specificity are intimately linked to the history and life of each family, or of one of the family members to whom the sometimes difficult choice of the object has been entrusted in a consensual manner. To extract them from their private context to expose them to a public gaze is to underline their value, whether symbolic, mnemonic, religious... At the same time as to highlight, by the very transposition, the particular relationship that each family maintains with its object.

Considered as the ancestor of museums, the cabinet of curiosities (appeared between the 16th century and the 17th century in Europe) is the place where the multiple dimensions of objects belonging to the most varied fields come together; certain cabinets of curiosities were thus qualified as Theater of the world. The cabinet of curiosities of the Casablanca Faces is, reduced to the scale of about twenty families, a small theater of emotions, memories, symbols...

Text: Florence Renault (https://www.hassandarsi.com/en/casablanca)