Exile: Dispossession and Resistance at Art Paris 2023

Leaving a place does not necessarily mean no longer being there. Whether exile is chosen or forced upon us, it is always something to be endured.

What exactly are we talking about? Is exile a condition, a context or an experience? This feeling of being dispossessed, whether of something, someone, or oneself, describes a state that one goes through, or rather which goes through us during, after or while waiting for an odyssey. It is often associated with refugees, migrants, stateless people, displaced populations and personae non gratae, but it can also apply to cosmopolitans, expats and all those who choose a nomadic lifestyle. “Exile is crushing” (Clarice Lispector). It leads to apathy, but it is also a catalyst for new possibilities, new imaginings and new solutions that are the result of a different relationship to time, different expectations, a different language and different commitments - commitment being the subject of the fair’s second theme, which is placed in the capable hands of my colleague Marc Donnadieu.

But what about other forms of exile? You can be exiled in your own country, which Etel Adnan expressed so well. Exiliance (a term coined to define the condition of being in exile) entails a process of estrangement. Exile is also confronted with language difficulties, the need to translate, to cobble together several languages and, as a form of resistance, to invent new ones. For Levinas, the one living in exile is also someone who does not conform to the social norm, who has a different perspective, lifestyle and relationship to the world. But isn’t that the very definition of an artist?

To take such metaphors one step further, don’t we all share the same experience of exile when we are separated from the uterus at birth? Paul B. Preciado speaks of migration and exile when describing his gender transition. The psychoanalyst and semiologist Julia Kristeva says that: “The experience of exile can be an opportunity, on the condition that one lives in an in-between state: I am me and I am the other. The idea that ‘the self cannot exist without the other’ is one of the foundations of psychoanalysis”. There are as many different forms of exile as there are forms of transformation, transition, inner journeys and journeys in the real world.

Tackling the theme of exile as part of this year’s edition of Art Paris is not riskless; the fair boasts an excellent selection of galleries and a remarkable number of international artists. How is it possible to do this complex notion justice, while avoiding the trap of treating it in the manner of a trending topic and exploiting a socio-political context for the sole benefit of the art market?

Wars in Ukraine and Palestine, the Mediterranean that is turning into a cemetery from one crossing to the next, climate change, the deadly consequences of corruption in Lebanon and the rise of the far right in Europe - amongst other issues - are leading to a world in which borders are increasingly disputed and violence is exacerbated. In this context, the curator has a heavy responsibility. How can this selection be nuanced to ensure that it constitutes a form of resistance in its own right and, to borrow the formula of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, stands against the political timing specific exploitation of art?

Although their mobility is often lauded, arts workers, artists and curators endeavour to resist this identity-based, geographical labelling that refers to their place of birth, where they work and all the other information mentioned in the explanatory notes accompanying various sorts of exhibitionary formats. As for contemporary artists, they belong to a more or less global social sphere. They are citizens of the world and at home everywhere, however their biographical trajectory often reflects the underlying socio-political contexts that determine their mobility or in some cases exile, whether voluntary or forced upon them.

I am no stranger to exile; in fact this is my third period of exile since the Lebanese civil war. I am torn between different places and have been forced to invent a new life for myself far from Beirut, a city that is in its death throes. Professionally speaking, I have been focusing on the themes of hospitality and migration since 2019 with the independent curatorial platform TAP (Temporary Art Platform) which I run, implementing radical actions, organising residencies and commissioning public artworks. To give just one example, the exhibition A Casa é Sua: migração e hos(ti)pitalidade fora do lugar, which opened in April 2022 at the Paço Imperial in Rio de Janeiro, is the fruit of a research into the tensions between guest and host. It brings together around 20 international contemporary artists who together tackle the question of migration, exile and hos(ti)pitalité (a term coined by Jacques Derrida from the French words for hospitality and hostility) from a South-South perspective.

During these years of investigation from a non-western viewpoint, I have looked at exile from a perspective that goes beyond a strictly geographical and identity-based understanding of the term. The history of slavery on which modern-day Brazil is founded, the persecution of indigenous peoples, necropolitics and anti-black racism are just some of the situations that point to forms of exile that are not necessarily associated with being separated from one’s home. Violence and oppression are just as likely to give rise to exilic experiences and motivate resistance, as illustrated by the Quilombos, which are settlements founded by runaway slaves.

Far from succumbing to the pathos of exile, our selection for Art Paris presents a panorama of the different positions, images, subjects of research and means of expression of artists in exile, or artists whose work addresses the question of exile as a complex, porous and personal process. In other words, an approach to the subject of exile that goes beyond a strictly identity-based geographical connotation.

To this end, we have chosen to associate a question with each work in the selection, hoping in this way to provide a key to understanding the artist’s intent. This curatorial manoeuvre could be considered slightly interventionist, but we stand by our choice as it allows gallery owners, collectors, visitors and readers to go elsewhere in their interpretation of what they are given to see.

What translations for exile? Can we go on when time no longer flows? Exile to describe a polymorphous body of work? Do we survive everyday life or survive thanks to everyday life? Can we imagine a home multiplied by mobility?

Soirée sur la Seine avec Pain de Sucre (2017), a photomontage by Brazilian artist Roberto Cabot, humoristically summarises the trajectory of life in exile, when one is simultaneously here and there. Anas Albraehe, Christine Safa, Nabil el Makhloufi and Leylâ Gediz paint the landscapes of everyday life, a life that is as much a burden as it saves us. Aung Ko, Nge Lay, Ivan Argóte, Boris Mikhaïlov and Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza tackle historical events through individual and collective stories. Myriam Mihindou, Majd Abdel Hamid and Leyla Cárdenas address fragility with the same use of textile and thread, a medium that is highly symbolic as far as our theme is concerned. Tirdad Hashemi and Zarina draw inspiration from their own lives to bear witness to situations of survival. Laure Prouvost, José Ángel Vincench and Taysir Batniji intersperse the selection with conceptual elements through which the literal becomes radical.

Welcome! We hope that this journey on the question of exile will have at least underlined the porous nature of its concept and been a welcoming space with a plurality of accents. A place that welcomes you. It is the Mediterranean. It is the place where you arrive. It is Greece. It is the place that welcomes you. It is the ground that could be under your feet. It is the sea in which you drown. It is Europe. [...] It is Calais. It is the world. It is Paris. It is the house in which you were happy but to which you will never return. [...] It is the place where you arrive. (Paul B. Preciado, 2019).