Art Taaalkssss: Latifa Echakhch

Latifa Echakhch, Several times, love don’t be shy, 2019, wool carpet, ink, white Paul Smith shirt, fragrance bottle Love don’t be shy by Kilian-edition 2019, pair of New Balance RC1400v5 shoes, Stuart A. Staples Friday night vinyl record, Parisienne cigarette pack, two wine glasses, 240 x 160 cm

The sculptures, paintings, and installations of Latifa Echakhch (born in El Khnansa, lives and works in Fully and Vevey) poetically incorporate culturally-loaded objects and concepts to expand the viewer’s staid associations with them. By means of interdisciplinary installations, her work often oscillates between forcefulness and fragility, using symbols that—in her own words—are both political and poetic, in a visual language that includes surrealist and conceptual elements.

For Art Taaalkssss Latifa Echakhch conveys a short look back into her practice focusing on the question of musicality. Many of her works and much of her research are rooted in this subject without making it their main topic. She explains in which way the question of time and memory can be challenged by using music and rhythm mechanisms in an installation or exhibition.

In 2022, Latifa Echakhch will represent Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. Additionally, her work was part of the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017); the 11th Sharjah Biennial (2013); the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); and Manifesta 7 in Bolzano (2008). She was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2013 and the Zurich Art Prize in 2015. Her work has been widely exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Kunsthaus Zürich; MACBA, Barcelona; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Swiss Institute, New York; Tate Modern, London; Le Magasin, Grenoble; and Fondazione Memmo, Rome.