Travel plays a central theme in both the written and painted works of Mohammed Kacimi. In the series Traversée, Kacimi examines the plight of what he terms the "crossed body" (le corps traverse), in which the body is able to cross barriers of language, territory and race while staying in one location. Kacimi suggests that human diversity and movement is now such that the body does not travel the world, the world travels the body. Visually, he suggests this phenomenon by positioning a figure in relation to windowlike fields of color "to release his body" (pour libérer son corps).
Description:
Mixed media work with variegated, highly textured surfaces and rich palettes of silvers, oranges, yellows and blue. It contains suggestions to architectural forms and a voluptuous seated figure, whose upper torso is concealed beneath the layers of paint and sediment. The atmosphere suggests hallucinations or apparitions of forms and action beneath a thick layering and density of materials.
Exhibition History:
A Brave New World, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., August 10, 2010-November 27, 2011
Recent Acquisitions and Promised Gifts, National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., October 18, 2002-January 5, 2003
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