Echo – Bilingual
Natasha NISIC
J. BECK
P.A. MICHAUD
Marta GILI, Actes Sud, 2014
What is the connection between a gesture and a landscape, between a landscape and a voice, or between several voices and a single body? Are there any links between Bavaria and Korea, between the Nikkei index and spirits, between a natural disaster and collateral damage?
All these seemingly unrelated issues are “echoed” in the work of Natacha Nisic by means of sinuous narratives that twist and turn, time and again, before coming together and taking shape in this exhibition.
Nisic’s oeuvre reflects the growing interest shown by certain contemporary artists in examining the tensions between de facto power and diffused power, between the visible and the invisible. On the one hand, Nisic explores the contradictions of beliefs, of the fear of the unknown and of the reversibility / irreversibility of perception. On the other, in subtly critical works her focus shifts from the effects of colonialism to the vagaries of Orientalism.
Thus, from her first Catalogue de gestes to her latest pieces, such as Indice Nikkei, e and, above all, f and Andrea en conversation, produced specifically for this exhibition, Nisic’s images conjure up no end of symbolic, perceptual and sensory associations that viewers must needs view in a kaleidoscopic manner in the light of past and present.
The Jeu de Paume would like to thank the artist for her enthusiasm and her dedication to the project, and the authors of the essays in the catalogue, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Beck Jee-sook and Florent Perrier, for their pertinent and enlightening contributions.
Last but not least, we should like to express our gratitude to the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, to Neuflize Vie, our chief partner, and to the Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques for their invaluable support, as well as the Amis du Jeu de Paume for their generous support for the catalogue.
Marta Gili, Director of the Jeu de Paume
Translated from Spanish by Josephine Watson
