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.

The one hundred and two drawings of the work Pas Perdus (“Lost Footsteps / Not Lost”) were created by Taysir Batniji during wanderings in the city. The artist traced footprints of unknown pedestrians directly off the ground. By rubbing pencil on paper, he recorded the impressions left by people’s shoes on the tarmac. These Pas perdus are tracings of the fleeting presence of the other. Situated on the cusp of appearance and disappearance, they reveal a movement, a step, a life that has passed this way.