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February 2, 2011 – Review
mounir fatmi’s "Without Anesthesia" at Analix Forever, Geneva
Aoife Rosenmeyer
mounir fatmi is an artist of resistance. It starts with his name, written lower case to challenge conventional orthographies that do not accommodate him. He was born in Tangier and lives in Paris, and the idea of exile and iconoclasm of Western, African, and Arab traditions appear frequently in his repertoire. His sculptural works tend toward the monumental in their concise, authoritative tone and their use of symbolic shorthand, so the chaotic din that greets the visitor behind the quiet shop-front of Analix Forever is surprising.
“Without Anaesthesia” is dominated by four video works generated during fatmi’s lengthy residency at Le Chaplin cultural centre in Mantes-la-Jolie. The “jolie” in the name is misleading, as today the town is best known not for beauty but rather the huge Val Fourré housing development in the Parisian banlieue where television crews go to capture suburban unrest and burning cars. The Val Fourré was built in the 1960s to meet a sharp increase in demand for homes, but the developers’ optimistic visions had clouded over even before the project was complete. Stifled funding brought about denser housing than originally planned and the project was not integrated into a broader transport infrastructure, leaving it marooned. Add …