Taysir Batniji

Venue

Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon (macLyon)

Lyon

Born in 1966 à Gaza, Palestine
Lives and works in Paris, France

Taysir Batniji’s work draws as much on the artist’s personal memories as on the turbulence of history and the present. His multidisciplinary practice — drawing, installation, sculpture, performance, photography and video — has a metaphorical, poetic dimension. Through his exploration of the private and the public spheres, of displacement and obstruction, memory and disappearance, Taysir Batniji presents a shifting definition of his own identity, which has been shaped geographically and culturally by both the Middle East and the West.

Drawn minimalistically with fluorescent paint, the lines of the work Al-Anqâa (The Phoenix) trace out a map of Gaza on the ground. As the city, over a period of several months, has been deprived of electricity and progressively destroyed, visitors are plunged into darkness and get lost in the labyrinthine twists and turns of the place and its history. Although darkness has fallen over the city, the glow that emanates from the artwork represents, in Taysir Batniji’s words, reminiscence, hope, the “duty to remember”.