art+فن presents
A GHOST,
MANY TAJINES
AND A TANGLE
OF THREADS
by Ale Gabeira
ART+
QUARANTINE
Ale Gabeira, is a Brazilian artist who doesn’t believe in borders; a nomad who made the whole world his home. Often traveling by bicycle, he is almost always on the move, inhabiting a path and developing concepts and relationships along the way, using different media to develop installations that dialogue with the natural landscape, architecture and culture of its inhabitants.
Confined in the Marrakech Medina, at Riad BE Marrakech, the lockdown in Morocco became a six months Artist Residency.
The result is the exhibition “A ghost, many tagines and a tangle of threads”.
This page on the Riad BE website is an initial restitution of the art+quarantine project with Ale Gabeira. Here you will have an overview of the exhibition and snapshots from the work in progress.
Enjoy the virtual exhibition and experience the "Buena Vida" spirit Ale Gabeira brought to the Riad.
“A ghost, many tagines and a tangle of threads” is the title of this solo exhibition of Ale Gabeira at Riad BE. The main work is the installation Cat's Cradle that transforms the three floors of the Riad into a light and colored immersive experience. The work is inspired by one of the oldest games known to humanity. The game is performed with a cord tied at the ends. The challenge is to maintain a sequence of geometric shapes that passes from hand to hand until one of the participants misses the position. Cat’s Cradle also means, in some cultures, a situation that is quite intricate, complicated. The installation presents the game and its complex shapes on an expanded scale. Here the artist plays the game in dialogue with the architecture of the Riad.
Cat’s Cradle’s first performance was last year in South Korea, during the Temiorae artist residency, which resulted in two installations in the gardens of the Cultural Center. In February of that year, at the invitation of the French curator Marc Pottier, Cat's Cradle was installed in two public squares in São Paulo. Now in Marrakech, the challenge is to bring the installation, initially designed for the outdoors, to dialogue with the inner architecture of Riad BE Marrakech. It is also a metaphorical process regarding the confinement that we are all experiencing. The artist and the work in
this case go through a similar process of adaptation and reinvention.
For the first time, Ale Gabeira is making a relecture of Cat’s Cradle in two dimensions. It is expressed in a series of paintings and schematic drawings that are part of the exhibition and amplify the narrative of the installation.
Laurent Lebleu is also a participant in the residency and he complements the exhibition. Laurent comes to life in a blue raincoat and since 2018, he has been accompanying Ale Gabeira in performances and other adventures.
During the artistic quarantine, the ghost, artist and bohemian Laurent Lebleu decided to recreate himself within his own artistic project. Laurent reinvented himself in partnership with the moroccan fashion designer Mouna. This first clone will inhabit Riad BE Marrakech during the exhibition period. The ghost promises to invite designers from other cities in the world to participate in his project: A design adventure that transform his appearance to blend in the local environments of every place he visits.
THE
GALLERY
THE MAKING OF
In Morocco, the Brazilian artist Ale Gabeira wanted to experience life between the walls of the old medina. Riad BE Marrakech offered him the stay and hosted him before the lockdown started. From initially two weeks the Riad extended his stay till now, due to the lockdown situation in Marrakech.
At first not being able to move led him to question the possibilities of working and continuing to develop his activity. But after the initial scare, he was able to recognize that this would be a favorable period for immersion. An invitation to work from a micro-cosmos. And he was in a perfect place to develop an artistic residency. Naturally, he organized a small workshop and started working informally. Seeing this, his hosts fffffffffffff
Nicole and Mohamed encouraged him to go deeper and make this residency process official by accepting his destiny and doing the best he can in the face of reality. Working with the accidents along the way.
During the artist residence, Gabeira and Riad BE in collaboration with moroccan artists Ramia Beladel and Nabil Skily, created the platform “Artist+” to talk about the experience during the lockdown and to share thoughts and feelings about the future of the cultural scene in Marrakech. They initiated a series of talks, which were going live on the Riad BE Instagram account. All the talks are available on IGTV.
The project brought Riad BE back to life during the hard days of confinement. Further more it encouraged the hosts to develop a future artistic residency program around art+فن in order to develop a dialogue with the art community of Marrakech.
ABOUT
ALE GABEIRA
Ale Gabeira was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1976. His journey in visual arts is preceded by his work as a filmmaker, photographer and journalist since 2000. As of 2008, he documents artistic processes and produces video art for exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
With permaculture regard and interest in the relation between community and landscape, he develops artworks that constantly appropriate bodies, objects and ideas to write visual narratives in the natural and architectural ambiences. In 2015, wins the Contemporary Art Prize from National Foundation of Arts (Funarte-Brazil).
Statement:
Moving is to be subject to the surprises of the way and put at stake our way of seeing and approaching. I make of the displacement a tool of work and I build in function of the accidents of the route. I am interested in the relationships between cultures and landscapes that I specially visit on bicycle pilgrimages. I develop a research that constantly appropriates ephemerality and transplantation of objects, bodies and ideas to create narratives and to write poetry in the landscape.