'Metamorphosis' is a two volume presentation. '(M)eta(M)orphosis (Vol. I) is an individual presentation of Amina Benbouchta at Artissima 2015 (Torino, Italia). It is held almost simultaneously with her second solo exhibition at the gallery Sabrina Amrani (Madrid, Spain): (M)eta(M)orphosis (Vol. II)' that will open on next November 12th.
By a game of transversality between different issues that shape the evolution of the life cycle, Amina Benbouchta studies this universal theme in the world around us. Using her own experience, human beings in general and women in particular, the artist explores the phenomenon that governs our existence.
The metamorphosis has always been associated with both the desire and the exercise of power. The female body crystallizes the mysteries of metamorphosis, because the woman is always represented as the object of violence, taken between submission to the dictates imposed by a patriarchal society and the desire for emancipation.
Amina Benbouchta not only want to discuss the theme of metamorphosis by reference to mythology, what matters most is the between-two, dissect through fraught with tension the timing of the various stages of human evolution and mutation images through the cycle of life. Analyze the complex process of transformation and to emphasize the notion of time between the original object and the transformed object.
Also, the series of photographs of Amina "Down the rabbit hole" is inspired by the rabbit hole, as in the story of Lewis Carroll, the psychological realities become objective realities, blurred boundaries between inside and outside, as Alice, always at the limit of what is right but pushing that limit. Women who appear in photographs invisible at the bottom of the den, modern figures of Alice evaded by the fantasy of imagination, of silences with strange animals and the suppression of time.
With this series of photographs Benbouchta Amina gets an excess of reality, as if the painting had been able to use its excesses. It is in these sets care in these familiar landscapes, is where any woman can recognize, wherever they live and whatever their condition. All women who at some point have been or have felt an object faceless, impersonal, invisible in a domestic gold jail.
For many women it is important artists talk about the ambiguous status of women, positioned in a society which is both revered and sacred time, but at the same time diminished or endangered. Benbouchta about scoring the contrast between the beauty of form, color and materials in your photos referring to confinement, oppression or submission. Silk clothes, precious caftans covered with gold embroidery that become wonderful boxes for women body but can sometimes be unbearable shackles. You can not distinguish the difference between fine ornaments of lamp shades and dress of women.
The elements and iconography of Amina Benbouchta photographs are an extension of his practice as a painter and sculptor. A pitorico universe and a practice that justifies the artist as well as' to bring out the space between things and their representation, this in-between, its difficulty, its impossibilidad sometimes.
Amina expressed in his painting a permanent duality coexist on a single canvas of sophistication and gross stupidity, the juxtaposition of aesthetic opposites, as if it was painted without a priori of taste, without seeking seduction, but to teach there is a kind of equivalence between misshapen stains colors, figurative or attempts contre-collages of fragments of classical painting, show that there are signs in these dull color applications that emerges from this set order to serve the purpose Amina Benbouchta, giving his 'evil spell' like Christian Prigent said apropos of Cy Twombly.
Amine canvases in a desire to coat while erasing other manifest. His recurring iconography borrowed the memory, the everyday of women and results in ways that the artist reproduces again and again in painting, sculpture and photography.
And it is just this system work, including assumed codes and transgression, Amina became a leading artist of his generation.
(Text inspired by 'Amina Benbouchta - The surface et le Coeur. - Bernard Collet)