(M)eta(M)orphosis

Sabrina Amrani presents ‘(M)eta(M)orphosis’, the second solo exhibition of Moroccan artist Amina Benbouchta at the gallery, embodying a complex array of different phenomena from the life world, here articulated as a through-passage or a constant state of change and dynamic fluctuation between different cycles of being and living. The artist turns to different metaphors –the Greek prefix meta is always present, expressing simultaneity but also extension, both spatial and temporal, borrowed from the language of nature, in order to address transformations in the body and the mind that cut across political subjectivities, social realities and historical selves. Different modalities of our current imaginary about spatial bodies is brought to the visual surface with both skepticism and curiosity.
 

Benbouchta’s investigation studies cultural and historical phenomena as forms in the natural world, part of cycles of birth and decay, looking at history and culture as living organisms that belong in larger structures of meaning. The artist reveals a part of her strategy in understanding the metamorphic phenomenon as an open reading of the female body and of the history of females –in the Middle East and around the world. The essence of modern bio-power is surveyed with the precise analytical language of images: As women are increasingly not the owners but debtors of their own bodies, these bodies become publicly scrutinized, shamed and ultimately shunned. While the artist is not directly addressing the politics and policies of representation, occult bodies are formed and revealed at the threshold of invisibility. Metamorphosis also touches on both desire and possession, and how bodies are internally changed by those mental activities.

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