lifting the veil
Galerie Carole Kvasnevski, France presents the work of artists Bruce Clarke, Manel Ndoye, Jean-David Nkot, Marc Padeu, and Tarek Ben Yakhlef. The Gallery announces with great pleasure its participation in the fair, and will take residence in the royal theatre of Marrakech to present you the exhibition, Lift the veil, from 21 to 24 February. Lifting the veil envelopes the theatre. It reminds us of a desert tent. It is made up of printed cloth, semi-transparent veils, falling weightlessly, harmoniously, esthetically around us. We are tempted, encouraged, to lift the veil.
The tent echoes the Bedouin origins of many North African societies. The installation is simultaneously an allegorical and a real space created through the juxtapositions of the veils evoking in esthetic terms a painful past and murky present. North African as well as Western societies have been built on slavery. Our cocoon was built through other peoples hard labor, often enforced. Discourse today on past slavery is largely consensual and condemning. However, we avoid and are embarrassed when confronted with forms of modern-day slavery in the heart of our societies. The printed images evoke those who built and are still building our wealth: the slaves, past and present. Looking objectively at our societies we could say that slavery was never abolished, only transformed and refined.
The spectator is invited to lift the veil. The tent is also a reference to the refugee and transit camps springing up in Europe and elsewhere denoting the extreme fragility of hundreds of thousands of people who have fled repression and poverty. Their futures are totally compromised by the interlinked system of modern day slave routes across the Sahara, the Mediterranean, the administrative jungle and repression in Europe. Each leg of their journey is managed by a series of intermediaries whom we can assimilate to modern-day slave traders.
The tent is not an aggressive space – it is calming, a space for reflexion and contemplation. It reminds us to be humble as to the origins of our comfort zone. No society can dissociate itself from its history, and all societies have murky shadows especially when it’s a question of determining the wealth that built them.Carole Kvasnevski, Gallerist
Galerie Carole Kvasnevski 39 rue dautancourt 75017 Paris France