Switzerland 2022

Title: The Concert
Commissioner: Swiss Arts Council Pro-Helvetia
Curator: Francesco Stocchi
Exhibitor: Latifa Echakhch in collaboration with Alexandre Babel

The Swiss Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia hosts Latifa Echakhch. In collaboration with composer Alexandre Babel, Echakhch creates scenes of impermanence and catharsis that reflects upon the cycle of life.

Gloomy remnants of art fill the first space, where visitors set out on a counterclockwise journey through time. In each room, the atmosphere changes – time runs backwards, from broad daylight to the evening before. Ever more recognizably inspired by folk sculpture and customs, the sculptures, filling the whole space, are increasingly veiled by a spreading darkness.

These are scenes of impermanence, of catharsis, with which installation artist Latifa Echakhch captivates visitors of the Pavilion of Switzerland at this year’s Biennale Arte, scenes that bring to the fore the cycle of life in a multi-layered and complex way. Most of the material used for the exhibition is itself part of a transformation, recycled from previous biennales.

The exhibition plays with harmonies and dissonances, with mixed feelings of expectation, fulfilment and disappearance. The sculptures are part of an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allows viewers to experience a fuller perception of time and of their own body.

Through the exhibition, the artist raises the question whether art, similar to music, only begins to exist once silence and emptiness take over.