Latifa Echakhch

Latifa Echakhch left Morocco when she was three years old. That might explain
why cultural expression has always had an element of nostalgia for her, mainly highlighting the absence of things. Her remedy is to divest cultural relics
of their functional meaning in order to reassess them. This is only possible if you disconnect well-known objects
from their original meaning. Only by
tackling prejudices can you remove the
veil of national and religious identity. Through simple manipulation and a slightly different perspective Latifa Echakhch
enables her viewers to look at things as though they were seeing them for the first time.

In Tambour 11' she drips jet-black ink onto a tondo, one of the round paintings traditionally mounted in the middle of a ceiling to
represent heaven. Placed on the floor, Echakhch drips the ink on the tondo, like a target, connecting with artists like 
Jackson Pollock. Only she is infinitely
more systematic. Ink is normally used
for writing, but the length of time it
 takes the ink to drip and to create the jet-black hole, symbolises the death of free speech, a black hole from which
nothing can escape.

Likewise in Micro Vide the microphones
have no membranes and in Sans Titre XXVI the carbon – symbol of the distribution of free
speech in times gone by – remains unused and without function. In this context, omission
and removal are means of adding substance.