Rhythm and Matter

The artist’s reflection on the different ways of being connected is apparent from the very first piece, The second sound of echo: in the intimacy of a very small room, we witness the transfer of physical impulses between two bodies, the artist and her father. Two stones, rubbing against each other, set the tempo, aiming to produce a spark, while one body sways, seeking unison. The rhythm seems to be that of heartbeats, sometimes in synch, sometimes irregular, evoking how one body existed before the other, how both existed simultaneously, and how one will inexorably disappear, while the other continues on. This suggestion of fusion is also present in the Untitled images in the next room, where two hands clasped on the horizon and a body on a beach seek to integrate the landscape.
The next work, She said, it’s always two bodies, focuses on the body and our experience of movement from a scientific and spiritual point of view. The artist creates an installation in which she achieves a kind of synthesis between form and function, with the materialization of her body at work, feeling its way through the material, abandoning itself to it. The soundtrack—cracks, whispers—helps us to penetrate the interior of this earth. On the one hand, this breakthrough into the flesh of the world; on the other, its trace.
While almost all the works in the exhibition deal with the question of time, the multi-screen video installation Duet with time uses an enigmatic ladder placed in the center of a courtyard, on which two performers rise from the ground to attempt an ascent. In this piece, the ladder becomes the spine, leading to the initiation and the fragmentation of steps, introducing the ability of certain forms to evoke ritual, giving free rein to the body’s intelligence and the mechanics of repetition. This repetitive, very slow, almost infinite movement is also the subject of I like never, I also like ever, a video installation that places the viewer at the center of these same two levitating bodies. Clarice Lispector, in her book of meditations, Agua viva (1973), writes “As if in levitation. My mind is empty of so much happiness. The intimate freedom I feel can only be compared to an aimless walk in the fields. [...] I have ceased to be tormented. Such is grace.” (5) In this way, I like never, I also like ever liberates bodies, leaving them in a state of permanent suspension and in the momentum of a movement that fragments into thousands of images that take time to see and feel. Starting with a classic dance figure, the plié-sauté, Brahim removes the beginning and end points, as if repelling gravity, to sustain this moment of levitation.