Screening of films by Randa Maroufi
This session is linked to the exhibition All about love by Mickalene Thomas.
Les Abattoirs is teaming up with Nouveau Printemps to present a special evening dedicated to the films of Randa Maroufi, who is offering a fourth instalment in her Les Intruses series, which began in 2018. Accustomed to sequence shots, composing photographs like cinema scenes or making films like a photograph in motion, the Toulouse-based artist creates shots in places of power - judicial, symbolic, of knowledge - such as the Palais de Justice or the Salle des Doyens at Toulouse Capitole University. In these places, around large tables, Randa Maroufi invites women to sit, in all their diversity.
Randa Maroufi :
Born in Casablanca in 1987, Randa Maroufi is a graduate of the Institut National des Beaux-Arts de Tétouan, the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d'Angers (France) and Le Fresnoy (France).
Randa Maroufi is interested in staging bodies in public or intimate spaces. Her artistic approach is often political, relying on ambiguity to question the status of images and the limits of representation.
She makes films that maintain an elastic relationship with reality. Many of her projects involve close collaboration with communities to which she is linked without necessarily being part of them. She constructs scenes of strange reality which, while remaining faithful to factual representation, establish an ethical relationship with lived experience.
His work, mainly expressed through photography, video, installation, performance and sound, has been presented at major contemporary art and film events such as the Marrakesh Biennial in 2014, Les Rencontres de Bamako in 2015, the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2016, La Videonale Bonn in 2017, the Sharjah Biennial in Lebanon in 2017, the Dakar Biennial in 2018, the Biennale do Mercosul in Brazil in 2018, and so on.
His film Le Park has won around twenty awards and is part of the National Collection of the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques).
From 2017 to 2018, Randa Maroufi was an artist member at Casa de Velázquez - the French Academy in Madrid. In 2024, she was nominated ‘Women to Watch France’ at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington.
Programme :
THE GREAT SAFAE / LA GRANDE SAFAE 15'56‘’, 2014
Copy : 5 + 2 artist's proofs
Produced by Le Fresnoy
Frac Poitou Charentes collection
The film is loosely based on a character known as ‘La Grande Safae’. Transgender, she spent a period of her life as a domestic worker in the artist's family, who were unaware of her trans-identity.
THE PARK, 14', 2015
Edition: 3 + 2 artist's proofs
Work produced by Le Fresnoy in partnership with the Institut Français de Casablanca.
CNAP Collection
A slow wander through an abandoned amusement park in the heart of Casablanca. The film paints a portrait of the young people who frequent this place and stages these lifetimes, meticulously recomposed and often inspired by an image found on social networks. The aim is to question viewpoints and multiply possibilities: political time, suspended danger, acting out... Between imminence and illusion, the audience observes while waiting for ‘something to happen’, and ends up accepting an experience of duration.
STAND-BY OFFICE, 13'20‘’, 2017
Edition: 5 + 2 artist's proofs
In collaboration with the group ‘We Are Here*’, Amsterdam.
A group of people in an office environment. Everyday working gestures are observed throughout the building. Nothing seems to be moved. The camera moves continuously and gradually changes our perception of this space. The question arises: what does this office mean to this group of people?
We Are Here is a group of refugees in Amsterdam who receive no accommodation from the government, but are also unable to work. The group has decided to make visible the inhumane situation they have to live in, by no longer hiding, but showing the situation of refugees who are ‘outside the law’ in the Netherlands.
With the support of : Le Fresnoy, Culture Resource's Production Awards Program, CBK Zuidoost, Cinelabs Romania, Studio aux cuves dorées.
BARBÈS, 6', 2019
From the series: Les Intruses
Frac Bretagne collection
Intruded’ women occupy the public space for the duration of a production. They adopt the same gestures and postures as men in similar places: they play cards, watch a football match in the indifference of the passage of time. They occupy the terraces, putting themselves on display in the strangeness of a public space of exclusion, that of gender.
BAB SEBTA, 2019, 19'
Edition: 5 + 2 artist's proofs
Production: Barney Production & Montfleuri Production
With the support of Fondation des Artistes (FR), DFI (QAT), CNC (FR), Kamel Lazaar Foundation (TUN), AFAC (LBN), La Casa de Velazquez (FR), Le Fresnoy (France).
Collection du Frac Paca
Bab Sebta is a series of reconstructions of situations observed at the border of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil. This place is the scene of trafficking in manufactured goods sold at knock-down prices. Thousands of people work there every day. Three distinct moments, corresponding to the stages of the border crossing, form the camera's path and the film's main thread.
More than just a documentary account akin to an experimental video, Bab Sebta can be seen as an artistic experiment that questions the limits of representation and invites us to take a brief glimpse of the strange reality that is the city.
Website: randamaroufi.com
