Ghizlane Sahli - Solo Exhibition

In "Histoires de Tripes" (“Tripe Stories”), Ghizlane Sahli invites us to an inner and organic journey, on a universal theme, and allows us to transcend what would normally exclude humans from seeing “Universatility”, and its sophisticated and complex mechanism. A universality that the artist cultivates on several levels: first of all, by the choice of her materials –plastic bottles, the wire mesh which supports them or the silk which covers them, could come from any part of the globe. But also, by that of the message: Ghizlane Sahli does not claim or condemn anything, for her, belonging is a fragmented prison, and identity, a notion far too complex to confine or freeze without risking alienation. To this, she consciously substitutes the exploration of what is most fundamental and common to man, his primitive origin, cleansed of all the stigmas that make it a distinction or belonging, whether cultural social, religious, geographical, racial or gender.

It is in this stripped and wriggling playground, that only a vital pulse continues to pace, that the artist strives to give substance to her subject. It all starts with the collection of thousands of plastic water bottles, which she cleans and cuts into cells, which she will then cover with sabra threads (vegetable silk), and then hangs on a shaped metal mesh shape. During a process in which the “definite” meets the “indefinite”, the artist likes to imagine that these alveoli represent cells, which, by clinging to this metal membrane, form a living and organic matter. A mechanism that sometimes escapes her, with a desire for surrender, expected and confessed. Just as she abandons herself to the stories of these collected bottles, each of which, by its origin, the hands that have palpated it, the lips that have touched it, tells its own story and brings its singular resonance.