4The assembly of the living

The works of Hélène Bellenger, Angélica Dass, Olivier Marbœuf, Hamedine Kane, Meschac Gaba, Ali Cherri, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, and Romuald Jandolo break down the distinctions that are supposed to separate individuals but also show that other barriers that we believe to be obvious, between nature and culture, human and non-human, past and present, are in reality constructed and unstable. They do not seek to erase differences or produce an ideal harmony, but to make the bonds, tensions and contradictions that shape our lives visible. Joy and violence, memory and belief, strength and fragility co-exist, without being reduced to simple opposites.

Through painting, installation or performance, the artists invent situations where existence is not self-evident, but is something built in the attention of others, in rubbing together and in shared experience.

That is how an assembly of the living is drawn. Not a homogeneous collective, but a space where different forms of existence meet, dialogue and become transformed. The barriers that we thought were inviolable become porous, allowing stories, memories and experiences to circulate. The differences are no longer lines of separation, but the very conditions of shared and multi-faceted lives.

Learn more about Ali Cherri’s work

How can we get out of the boxes that assign single and reductive identities to individuals? The works gathered here do not offer new classifications. They demonstrate the gap between racial, cultural or historic categories and the reality of lived experiences. Faced with the concrete diversity of skin colours, faces and bodies, the simple oppositions and the fake hierarchies fall apart.

By playing with the codes of representation, the artists create spaces of reparation where each life can find its bearings, be embodied and take its rightful place in history, no longer belonging to a fixed and abstract category, but as a singular presence in the world.

What do we call “living”? What can we reduce to the status of object, decoration or resource? Here, the living does not just mean human beings or nature, but all the relationships that bind us to others, to histories and to lands.

The artists gathered here offer unexpected assemblies. They set up relations between human and animal bodies, sacred references and everyday shapes. They remind us that each thing should be understood in its relationship to what is around it, its past and the spaces it passes through. These relationships formed from tensions or attachments are at the heart of the installations on display. By using drawing to map out these exchanges or by bringing works together to have them enter into dialogue, they create places where knowledge, voices and stories circulate.

These works are an invitation to think of the world as a weaving of relationships rather than a sum of separate entities. They offer us a view of common lives: a world that is not uniform but criss-crossed with shared experiences.