Le Chemin de Roses. View of the installation at Palazzo Levi, San Marco
Photo below: Rachid Koraїchi throws rose petals in the bowls.
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Le Chemin de Roses. View of the installation at Palazzo Levi, San Marco
Photo below: Rachid Koraїchi throws rose petals in the bowls.
Le Chemin de Roses. 2001
Mixed media installation
Embroidered silk banners, steel sculptures, ceramic basins
Paris-based Algerian artist Rachid Koraїchi's nonpareil mastery of calligraphy can be seen in Le Chemin de Roses, in which he evokes the idea of safar or travel and transcendence in Islamic Sufi thought by recalling the trip of the traveller and scholar Jalal al-Din al-Rumi across the Mediterranean to Qonya, Turkey, where legend has it that he met Ibn Arabi, the great Sufi mystic and poet. Koraїchi’s installation iconizes al-Rumi’s journey across continents through Turkish ceramic ablution basins, Moroccan gold-embroidered linen, and metal, highlighting the rich encounter between two Sufi masters and three continents, as well as al-Rumi’s idea of the inseparability of aesthetics and metaphysics, where art unites with the Divine.
See also:
Rachid Koraïchi: The Path of Roses
Essay by Maryline Lostia, Casablanca. Nafas Art Magazine, Mar 2003
Authentic / Ex-centric: Africa in and out of Africa
49th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
10 June - 4 November 2001
Curators: Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe
Associated curator: Emma Bedford
Artists: Willem Boshoff, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Godfried Donkor, Rachid Koraїchi, Berni Searle, Zineb Sedira, Yinka Shonibare
Venue: Palazzo Fondazione Levi, San Marco, Venice
© Photos: Universes in Universe, unless otherwise indicated.
© Texts: Salah M. Hassan and Olu Oguibe.