Du 10 février au 1er avril 2022, Kulte invite l’artiste Soukaina Joual à présenter une série inédite de travaux.

Dans le prolongement de ses séries Awrah et Disobedience (Adam et Eve), يـ/جسد/ون  Em/body/ies aborde la perception du corps féminin à travers l’histoire de l’art et les cultures, et particulièrement l’aniconisme dans les arts de l’Islam.
Avec ces miniatures, l’artiste crée un sujet à partir de nus tirés de peintures classiques de la Renaissance et de livres d’anatomie humaine. Les miniatures figurent des superpositions de corps féminins dans diverses positions – debout, couchées, accroupies, assisses – à l’intérieur d’un espace amorphe mais contenu, de sorte qu’elles peuvent sembler être en mouvement. L’artiste y manipule les formes et les représentations figuratives pour présenter de nouvelles expressions d’incarnation et de façons de voir le nu.

_

From February 11 to April 1, 2022, Kulte invites artist Soukaina Joual to present a new series of works :  Em/body/ies يـ‭/‬جسد‭/‬ون.

Building on her previous series Awrah and Disobedience (Adam et Eve), Soukaina Joual addresses the perception of the female body over time, across cultures and throughout art history. Em/body/ies‭ ‬يـ‭/‬جسد‭/‬ون consists of miniature paintings, appropriated from Greek sculpture to Renaissance drawing and painting, Persian, Indian and Islamic illuminated manuscripts. In most Arab societies, the visual representation of living beings is forbidden. Thus the bodies of holy figures are often visible, but their faces are covered with a veil, out of reverence and respect.In her miniatures, Soukaina Joual creates a subject matter using nudes from the classical Renaissance paintings & photos of human anatomy. They depict multiple superimposed nude female bodies in an amorphous yet contained space so that they might seem in motion. The bodies are portrayed in a state of nudity, whether in groups or pairs. They appear stripped and exposed, huddled in a surface of a fleshy colour that turns into an open space in a moment of intimacy. The naked bodies move in and out of focus and blend until they almost become one flesh.

The overlaid bodies are intentionally not veristic, to abstract the usual depiction of female bodies. Instead, the artist exploits forms of figurative representations to introduce renewed ways of looking at nudity or other expressions of embodiment.