The KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival is held annually over four weeks during the height of the spring tourist season in Kyoto, in a style that is unique in Asia. Exhibitions are spread across the city, staged creatively in various traditional and contemporary settings. The festival creates opportunities, bringing people together of all ages, cultures and backgrounds. Now recognized as one of the world’s leading photography events, KYOTOGRAPHIE has attracted some 560,000 visitors from within Japan and overseas since 2013. An artist closely watched in the global art scene with a solo show at the Galerie National du Jeu de Paume and screenings at the Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions, Ismaïl Bahri divides his time between Tunis and Paris. In this display of his work Bahri makes full use of scenery outside Nijo Castleʼs Okiyodokoro and the light that infiltrates bringing out the special qualities of the space. Bahri’s work embodies the photographic, exploring the relationship between natural elements, how they affect each other and influence space, exposing us to new moments in our everyday. The exhibition title “Kusunoki” was inspired by the camphor tree visible from the Okiyodokoro window.
Ismaïl Bahri lives and works in Paris and Tunis. His work incorporates many cultural and aesthetic references, developing sensitive and precise visual experiments. The results take varying forms, and involve the manipulation and transformation of basic materials, often through mechanically inspired gestures and procedures related to cinema or photography. While the production of traces constitutes a revelatory act, Bahri equally privileges experiences that build on the organic and fleeting nature of things. From the strange rituals invented by the artist emerges a questioning of the limits of the visible, and of perception itself.
Mouna Mekouar (Curator) is an independent curator and art critic. She held curatorial positions at Centre Pompidou- Metz, Metz (2008-2010) and at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2011-2013). She is preparing with Martin Bethenod a group show at Punta della Dogana in Venice (march-december 2019). ‘Luogo e Segni’ (‘Place and Signs’) which takes its title from a painting by Carol Rama brings together over one hundred works, by thirty artists, from Pinault Collection. Simultaneously, she is preparing an exhibition with Christo entitled ‘Femmes 1962-1968’ at musée YVES SAINT LAURENT marrakech (march-june 2019). She has curated several exhibitions, including a show entitled ‘Garden of Memory’ with Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal and Bob Wilson at musée YVES SAINT LAURENT marrakech (2018), Phillipe Parreno‘s Carte Blanche ‘Anywhere, anywhere out of the world’ at Palais de Tokyo (2013). She also curated ‘Tino Sehgal à Marrakech’ (2016), a unique project that unfolded on the Jemâa el-Fna square in Marrakech. As associate curator she also collaborated to numerous exhibitions such as ‘Formes Simples’ (2015) and ‘Chefs d’œuvres ?’ (2011), presented at Centre Pompidou-Metz, and to major appointments of the art world, such as the 11th edition of the Shanghai Biennial in 2016. She has published numerous essays and publications and regularly collaborates with specialised magazines.
Exhibition Dates | 14.04 to 13.05.2019 | Castle Ninomaru Palace Daidokoro Kitchen Kyoto | Japan