LES BOUCHES
KARIM DJAOUI
COLLECTIF DE SANTÉ LA PERCHE, CHAUSSÉE DE FOREST 183
BRUSSELS, UNTIL THE END OF SEPTEMBER
To begin with, the waiting room of this place is an architectural marvel worthy of the memory of Valentine Schlegel. The walls are built into comforting soft shapes of the gleaming white, forming cavities, hidden corners, shelves, and seats, all in one continuous piece. What fun. You would not know what to choose from the variety of sitting options. The non-uniformed environment invites you to try it all out. Once you have settled, the mere waiting for the secretary to call your name is transportive, evoking images of Southern France, Spain, Portugal.
It is clear, the aesthetic experience of the waiting room is a reason enough to become a patient at La Perche. In addition, there are exhibitions of paintings and photographs, landscapes and abstractions, often corresponding to the idea of what one could come across in a hall of a health centre. Let’s say, those exhibitions have rarely interacted with the space, confining themselves to a more classical, charming cabinet display. Their function, as the Collectif de Santé La Perche states on its website, is to bring local art from the area to a wider non-initiated public. With the current exhibition, however, the programme has produced something different, creating a sense of the whole that is rare in any context.
The works of Karim Djaoui, a weaver previously unknown to me, are on display. As far as I could find out, he is a self-taught artist, dedicated to his craft. He has proposed a series of huge woven mouths, bright red, some with healthy pink gums and all their teeth unashamedly showing. These woollen mouths are attached to thin white textile supports, rather elegant and respectful of the "Schlegel" walls that host them. I do not know whether it was a happy coincidence or a deliberate work, but for the first time I was able to perceive the space of the waiting room, its original function, and the exhibition intervention as an ensemble. The following thoughts may come to mind:
- from the superficial comedy of the chosen subject brought into this very setting: is it a dental cabinet?
- to the grotesque play on the scale: the secretary is tiny at her desk protected by a plastic screen, with a tiny window, which is itself a kind of discreet but essential mouth, confronted to the intense multitude of giant woven mouths surrounding her
- to the symbolism that is at once distant and straightforwardly efficient: the red cross?
- to something socio-political: mouths of a certain kind, in this very socially oriented cabinet that deals with a large part of the Hispanic population of the hood. Are those open mouths happy or hungry? Simply happy but with some teeth amiss? Missing them due to which circumstance? Or am I looking for problems where none exist? Is it another version of the Shroud of Turin?
- to the purely sensory and again grotesque clash: woollen mouths - the residual fibre in the scenario of a kiss is an intrusive thought, as is a bizarre redundancy of the idea of a beard.
I almost wish I did not tell you and kept my lower St-Gilles secret to myself. But there you go, don’t wait until you have the flu to visit the Collectif de Santé La Perche. You can simulate one or come for an honest general check-up, friendly and inexpensive. Or just drop in and have a seat for a quiet moment, The Mouths of Karim Djaoui are on view until the end of the month of September.
Polina Akhmetyanova