Family reunion

Performance, 2017, 10’ (approx.)

Performance in two acts including a wood installation, a picture and sound design, Family reunion considers the images not as testimonials or index traces of reality but as facades. Screen of projection of our mental representations, the images mask the intimate cracks deceiving as to the true nature of reality. The very nature of family photographs used for this performance obeys to universal conventions as everyone can recognise itself in them, but yet, their secret remains complete.

The family image is doubly a valuable relic object at most to the point for those who are exiled, as a paper or virtual object that allows you to remember the old days but also as an open window to a past that often does not happen. 

This performance concretises to thwart it, the bad inclination of images: too much seeing the images return to no longer look at them as they are skimmed without particular attention. To force this attention the performative form puts forward very concretely the idea to see the clichés beyond the clichés.

In the first part the artist addresses the public and then the characters whose photographs are projected. Doing a sort of image analysing describing what the spectators see on the surface of the images, she finally claims what lies underneath their outer.

The second part is marked by the French music hit of Gilbert Bécaud Et maintenant (And now) which evokes not only a music that resonated in the year of the Independence of Algeria, but also a love story, the story of the hurt love of the pied noir community for Algeria which they, the sense of history requires, will have to mourn. Frantically manipulating old suitcases, the artist interacts with the projected images.