Carole Douillard
Art Center
Fri 25 Oct 2014 at 12 am
The Waiting Room
performance
with Laurent Cebe, Fabien de Chavanes, Franck Mas, Stève Paulet, Axel Roy, Pascal Simon
In an empty exhibition room a group of men are waiting for something that does not happen. At the origin of this silent four-hour-long action is the Arabic hittist tradition that literally translates as "those holding up the walls". The result is a veritable life picture.
The Waiting Room shows us a group of men in an empty exhibition room waiting – in vain – for an undefined something to happen. The subject here is “hittism” – from the Arabic for “holding up the wall” – a common social usage in North Africa, where unemployed men spend hours in the street leaning against walls, doing nothing. This is a characteristically Mediterranean public practice transferred by the artist into the space of the art centre. The action – or, rather, inaction – lasts four hours, with visitors invited to come and watch. Later a short text describing what happened on the day of the opening is displayed on the wall of the empty exhibition room.
Visual and performance artist Carole Douillard focuses on the body as sculpture, using different social contexts to test out the presence of a physical body in relation to the social body represented by the general public. In The Viewers she confronts visitors to the exhibition with a silent, motionless group of people. Occupying space just like the other exhibits, they observe the observers in an infinite loop of visual interplay. Douillard’s piece calls for redefinition of the spectator, the performance space and the power plays between the contemplated and the contemplator.
This exhibition has been organised in association with Pontbriand W.O.R.K.S and the Jeu de Paume, with the assistance of the Getty Research Institute and Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, with the support of Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture and the Mondriaan Fund.
