2013 / Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef Palace, Fez, Morocco

“Laurent Pernot”, personal exhibition from 6 to 30 December 2013

As part of “Rencontres Internationales de la photo” in Fez

The meeting between the infinite depth of the starry sky of Fez and the spontaneity of the Moroccan youth dictated this programming. Because if the art of photography is a machine to go back in time, we also know that by looking up to the sky, at night, we see stars only those whose light has already reached us. The same is true for generational changes and representational tools. These change with the evolution of techniques. These evolutions do not change our perceptions, which nevertheless insensibly incorporate new dimensions of knowledge whose meaning we do not yet fully understand. We are taken with a sweet nostalgia before Bernard Plossu’s silvery miniatures that express the beauty of a country traveled 40 years ago, from Tangier to Tiznit and allow us to measure the time that has passed. At the same time, the young photographers presented by Lamia Naji (Céline Croze and Hassan Ouazzani) offer us a resolutely urban and dynamic vision of the current Morocco. Lamia Naji’s video, “Yes, We are! Morrocans “, reproduces through images and sounds the syncopated score of the festive gatherings of young people. The artist espouses their new ways of being together, of finding themselves physically and of inventing new sociabilities by freeing themselves from the constraints and pressures that society exerts on them.

The installation of composite videos, light projections and objects by Laurent Pernot in the prestigious Sidi Mohammed Ben Youssef Cultural Palace takes us on a mesmerizing poetic journey. The artist explores the fictional potential of the place to develop its major themes, that is to say the identity, the fragility, the origin and the limits of the living.

Curatorial team : Anne-Marie Morice, Lamia Naji