mounir fatmi: If You Don’t Know Me By Now

When mounir fatmi was a child growing up in Morocco, he remembers vividly the day that they were going to get cable TV in his house, and how the technician installed the distinctive white coaxial cable to make it all work. He explains, “I saw how the antenna cable ran from the outside and through the whole architecture of the house. And I saw how it changed our entire relationship to images.” This event had a deep impact on the bourgeoning artist, both visually, with the cable snaking around the building, but also metaphorically, seeing this cable as a link, a form of communication that has opened up new means of communication.

Having grown up near Casa Barata, one of Tangier’s most well-known flea markets, fatmi has long been aware of changing technologies and trends. Boxes of discarded objects that no longer serve their purpose, whether cameras, VHS cassettes or old cell phones would constantly make their appearance. He notes, “one day, I remember seeing boxes of Nokia phones arriving to the market and I knew that phone was soon going to be obsolete.”

In the mid-1990s, the artist began using the white cable wire in his work. First, he bundled them into small sculptures, placing colorful electrician’s tape in an almost ‘painterly’ way, referencing the color blocks of the De Stijl movement. This led to further experiments of how to use the cable as a medium, moving from freestanding sculptures to wall pieces. Here, placed on a white wood background, fatmi twists, cuts and precisely nails the cable to the board to evoke iconic images from religious imagery such as La Pieta or the Jesus with the Crown of Thorns, which stem from his classical training at the Art Academy in Rome to potent cultural references such as a large-scale 0 to the Al-Jazeera logo. Never afraid to push the boundaries, and the conversation, fatmi embeds within these elegant and aesthetically captivating artworks, his own codes and meanings. He says, “A wire is a link, a medium in the true sense of the world. It is between two things. It connects them. The antenna cable works in this way, between the image we want to broadcast and the person receiving the image.”

The newest works include a small series made in color. Small framed pieces in saturated red, blue, yellow and green draw the eye if only for their unabashed brightness in an otherwise monochromatic exhibition. The cable reflects images of stock market graphs and are purposefully opaque, as these graphs are for most of the world, requiring the viewer to come up close to try and ‘read’ them. He notes, “I am trying to find a sense of organization within the chaos.”

fatmi is more than aware of the trap that he has set for himself by using cable as a material, noting that “Now, I am working quickly on some of the last works in this series because soon the cable itself will be obsolete.” This reality adds another dimension the work, in essence, making them limited editions. This was the same with his series of work using VHS cassettes. He says, “I am always questioning how we archive information from technologies that until now have helped us understand the contemporary world. And how we move onto the next one.”

If You Don’t Know Me By Now brings together the largest collection of these cable pieces, which he has now been developing on for over 25-years. A rare opportunity to see such a large grouping of these artworks, and to see the shifts over these years that has led to this unique body of work.

mounir fatmi: If You Don’t Know Me By Now opened on November 28th, 2024 and is on view through January 18th, 2025.

For more information visit:

www.mounirfatmi.com

@mounirfatmiofficiel

www.ceyssonbenetiere.com

@ceysson_benetiere