The Geopoetics of F.Baghriche

The Geopoetics of Fayçal Baghriche
Lily Matras

The sky of Elective Purification (2004) is scattered with a myriad of stars of different shapes, colors and arrangements. One visitor may pass by and catch a glimpse of the simple beauty of a bright blue firmament. Another could stop and wonder at the eccentricity of an artist fooling with our sky : the use of crude colors, unaesthetic simplifications, and a peculiar composition. A third one may come to a halt in order to merely contemplate the meaning of what is shown. That person might look up, gaze at Fayçal Baghriche’s starry day and notice the seemingly arbitrary dispositions, the enigmatic grouping of stars, and the blue color so thick and flat that it gives away a blatant alibi. He or she may dwell upon the opposition between the content and the form, between what was chosen to be represented and the actual denotation. He or she could frown and turn to the title in search of answers. Elective Purification visibly insists on the idea of a process, suggesting this work has undergone multiple alterations and was partially distorted. These antithetic associations are at the core of Fayçal Baghriche’s artistic approach. With an extreme economy of means and a strict – almost scientific – selection of protocols which rule out the influence of esthetic considerations, the artist manipulates and undermines strong collective references to bestow a new meaning upon them. Baghriche describes himself as a questioner using the figure of hypothesis as a starting point for his reflections. “What if…?” he constantly wonders. Allowing his ideas to interfere with automatic conventions and behaviors enables him to point out or invert their mechanisms.

Elective Purification is part of a wider series of reflections revolving around the idea of nations as a reality both omnipresent and abstract. For this particular piece, the artist started off with an enlarged version of a double page of a dictionary depicting the national flags of all UNO countries in alphabetical order. He then covered the entire page with a plain blue tint area, only preserving the banner’s stars from this radical intervention. This way, he liberates them to let them float in an anonymous sky offering neither bearings nor barriers and displays a thorough overhaul which goes against every rule and function of the original representation. Consequently upsetting a system of strongly loaded visuals, the artist alters what is thought to be immutable. He creates a subversive context as he neutralizes our conception of geopolitics. By bringing together a radiant confrontation of artificial and natural images, of social codes and artistic forms, Baghriche imparts humility to the first and functionality to the second. Through this simple and somewhat childish action, he removes weight from notions that carry too much importance and enhances ones that should have more. In the end, Elective Purification destabilizes what entails authority. Applied to the subject of statehood and flags as a figures standing for both unification and demarcation, the act of dissolving by a simple arbitrary decision patriotic symbols which convey complex constructions of meanings is not anodyne.

Nevertheless, portraying Fayçal Baghriche as some sort of wrecker would be erroneous. In other words, his work shows a great awareness of his own power and limits as an artist. Even while dealing with such issues, his creations do not necessarily convey a political statement or a revolutionary message aiming at overthrowing the established order. His minimalistic interventions are not meant to provoke but rather tend to insinuate a hidden potential to those who are eager to unravel a deeper meaning of his work. The viewer hence plays a central role in the systems put forward by the artist. He or she is free to decide what to retain from the art piece, therefore elevating their interpretation to the process of creation. The fact that his creator adapts the alphabetical ordering of the countries according to the place Elective Purification is presented is revealing for the philosophy of Baghriche, who wishes to deconstruct established hierarchies, even in the art world.

The starry sky is sometimes accompanied in exhibitions by Souvenir (2009), a luminous globe spinning so fast that countries and continents become indiscernible. Yet again, it is the blue of the sea which overwhelms the scene. Once more, through a similar process, we are led to overcast a doubt on the rules of our perceptions and following associations.

All in all, the installation can be read as an invitation to the voyage. At first, we meet with two simple elements, the sky, and the earth. A charming simplification of the universe we are familiar with. The creational action and the layers of meanings appear over a second phase but are not meant to linger on. They rapidly vanish again as we take distance from a standardized reality. Other horizons open to us. Supported by a reduced scale enabling to step backwards, we are given the chance to accept another grammar, an invisible and mute idiom so evidently pure and naive, it appeases. We are driven into contemplation of a different skyline that blurs the pragmatic encyclopedic approach of our surroundings making us wonder where the illusion is truly set.

Indeed, the action of masking and erasing potent bearings actually reveals the loss begotten by frames that subjugate us when they truly only are an option amongst others. Wider and further abstract values ought to be preferred to the constant repetition of unfertile schemes. In this sense, Fayçal Baghriche’s creations are highly poetic. His search for an aesthetics of disappearance that offers no grip to dry definitions of our society he deliberately laids low gives evidence of his strong desire for utopia, lightness and elevation. Mighty symbolic reflexes are processed into a reinvented cosmogony, an infinite and natural vision of our world, a new identity. As nations turn inward in their quest for their raison d’être, the art of Fayçal Baghriche attests to a great deal of concern for contemporary issues. In an era characterized by simultaneous derealization and hyperrealism, despite appearances and through oneiric figures (one shall not judge a dictionary by its cover), he leads a peaceful fight against the determinism of geopolitics by placing its stars at our reach.

With Elective Purification and Souvenir, Fayçal Baghriche firmly marks an essential difference of function between art and politics, emphasizing that they take action on very different grounds. Indeed, even dealing with a mutuality of topics, the artist is the one who walks head in the clouds.