Project Description

Maportaliche / It has no importance is a mixed-media installation of a patchwork of words, texts, short descriptions in languages from the artist’s lived socio-linguistic reality in Algeria as well as from his world of literary and theatrical production. The work stages a parody of a football match between fictional characters, incorporating a set of hybrid words, stories, folk songs, jokes, urban legends and graffiti culled from Algerian popular culture. The installation engages themes of transgression and betrayal, exploring the resonance and dissonance between a writer and society, cast as a match between ‘cultural input’ on one side and ‘literary output’ on the other.

T-shirt Design: Ali Cherri, Graffiti: Faouzi Khlifi a.k.a. eL Seed. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation

April 2011