Ali Cherri

Personnaly marked by Lebanon’s civil war and today by the region’s persistent conflicts, Ali Cherri breathes life into artifacts (objects and fragments from various cultures and regions) and invents characters who are unwitting witnesses to these confrontations. 

In occupying the display cases, a classic museum device, and taking advantage of the Bourse de Commerce's circularity, his work alludes to film and its twenty-four images per second, constituting ghostly flashes between reality and fiction, past and present.  

In combining archaeological finds with his own creations, the artist gives birth to half-asleep chimeras that compel us to reflect on the manipulations of artifacts (i.e., their plundering, trafficking, and appropriation) and consequences of such actions, such as the loss of meaning. “The grafts I make in my series of sculptures constitute a form of solidarity between bodies that have been shattered, fragmented, and violated, and which create a community by being fused together,” Cherri explains. Ali Cherri was also inspired by Jean Cocteau’s 1930 Surrealist film The Blood of a Poet. In applying handwritten phrases from the screenplay to the backgrounds of the display cases, they come to symbolise a passage from one world to another.

Curated by: Jean‑ Marie Gallais, Curator, Pinault Collection

This installation is presented as part of the “Corps et âmes” exhibition.