Work from the Collection

Parler en langues (Poster)

Date: 2016
Medium: Silkscreen print
Materials: Paper, Ink
Collection: Lafayette anticipations - Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin
Domain: Prints
The poster announces a performance presented at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris on the occasion of the Nuit Blanche 2016 event. The artist invited the actor Corneliu Dragomirescu to animate the statues in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Chimay with his recitations. Ignoring the spectator, he presented himself as a modern Pygmalion, capable of creating a direct dialogue with the statues. For Saâdane Afif, addressing the monuments of the past is a way of reversing the direction of history. The poster is the only tangible evidence of this performance. It invites the visitor to attend, mentions the many collaborators involved, and presents one of the statues that are to be animated. Here, Saâdane Afif reinterprets the "speakers’ corner" formula that he developed in 2011 for the exhibition Meeting Points 6, and then further developed for The Laguna’s Tribute in 2015.

Text written by Claire Tallon as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.