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Earth and Roots: A long walk from the Middle East to Africa

From November 15, 2018 until January 13, 2019Mondays through Saturdays, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Sundays and holidays from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe Hall of Columns (at Calle Alcalá, 62, Basement Level). Mondays through Saturdays, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Sundays and holidays from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached.

From November 15, this exhibition by artist Houda Terjuman will be open to the public.

The contemporary world is defined by cultural blending. Through the theoretical perspective of Cultural Studies, multiculturalism is assigned a completely positive status, a new force that helps reorganize social spaces into new forms of society; it helps structure new practices and problematize new theories of self-representation, as the sole way to surmount the disciplinary limits and dictates which each culture imposes on individuals.

Escaping from the given space, assuming uprootedness and displacement towards another place that has repercussions on the individual, whether by fleeing from war or going out in search of work to build a life that may meet wants and needs, constitutes a starting point that signifies the loss of contact with the homeland. Under a status of exile, man becomes an uprooted tree, as in this story told by Houda Terjuman, who ends by recovering stability in the floating, liquid space of the contemporary.

Sculpture, as Heidegger reminds us, plays the role of creating a new space, a place to live and negotiate processes of identity in the confrontation with otherness. The tree and biological systems are a metaphor for cultural status because, once eradicated and after resisting outside pressures, they end up producing a single root which spreads in several directions, instead of attempting to keep their grasp on the depths of the soil.

Houda Terjuman was born in Morocco in 1970 to a Syrian father and Swiss mother. After earning her BA at the American School of Switzerland, she decided to take up sculpture. In the end, her works have been exhibited at many different galleries in Europe, the Middle East and the Maghreb region. She has taken part in contemporary art fairs such as “1:54” in London, “Artissima” (Turin), “Volta Show” (Basel) and “AKAA” (Paris). She has also participated in group exhibitions at museums such MMVI in Rabat, and the Viborg Kunsthal in Norway and and Brandts Odense in Denmark.

In her floating sculptures, she takes us on a journey from the Middle East to the West and Africa. Man in in exile becomes an uprooted tree who lives a painful journey to find balance.
Earth and Roots: A long walk from the Middle East to Africa
Photo: Family Histories 2 (plaster, cardboard, sponge, wire, 2018)