The eye and the night
From September 19th, 2019, to February 9th, 2020, the Institut des Cultures d’Islam presents The eye and the night, an exhibition curated by Géraldine Bloch.
The works by eighteen artists originating from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe question our perception of nighttime, between the profane and the sacred, and the real and the imaginary.
The works presented in the exhibition invite the visitor to embark on an extraordinary journey in darkness by offering a panoramic representation of our nights.
The first part of the exhibition addresses the experience of pitch-black nights as a source of knowledge and revelations. Gazing at the sky, the marvellous, poetry, the mystical, and the sciences appear to meld.
The exhibition then offers visitors an opportunity to experience the shifting and disquieting night light. In the reinterpreted chiaroscuro the bodies – and their stories – are concealed. A refuge and a barrier, night remains a time of solitude and adversity.
The exhibition ends with artificial nights, between eclipses and illusions. Lulled by dreams and memories, the nights invented by the artists are both bewildering and familiar.
« The Arabs, taking up the tradition of the ancient Greeks, developed instruments, such as celestial globes and astrolabes, for reading the celestial vault and the stars. Astrolabe means star catcher in Greek. »
Yannick Lintz, directrice des arts de l’Islam, Musée du Louvre, extrait de La nuit dans l’art islamique : sujet ou décor ?
« At the Goutte d’Or, the exhibition The Eye and the Night is an invitation to a poetic wandering around forty European, African and Middle Eastern works. »
Jeune Afrique
Back to the past exhibitions
Artists :
Armen AGOP, Renaud AUGUSTE-DORMEUIL, Mustapha AZEROUAL, Fayçal BAGHRICHE, Halida BOUGHRIET, Walid EL MASRI, Laura EL-TANTAWY, Shirazeh HOUSHIARY, Yazan KHALILI, MEEN ONE, Timo NASSERI, Saad QURESHI, Stéphanie SAADÉ, Mouna SABONI, Anri SALA, Mourad SALEM, Vladimir SKODA and Ïrem SÖZEN.
Curator :
Géraldine BLOCH
Executive Director :
Stéphanie CHAZALON
Research and Scientific Committee :
Aboubakr CHRAÏBI, Fatoumata KÉBÉ, Yannick LINTZ and Pierre LORY
56, rue Stephenson — 75018 Paris
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