Letter: to Mohammed Alani

… It's been almost 5 years since we first met. I was preparing at that time, for the Venice Biennale, the Pavilion of Iraq, the country where you were born. The meeting was much more than a simple workshop visit. In a space somewhere in Forêt, a kind of empty garage, you had prepared a small exhibition. You thought it was important that I could physically experience your works, instead of showing me a series of photos on your computer screen. The meeting was a real invitation to look, to feel a transformation, to play a game. And this game, we call it art. It is essential to look in this way at the ability to give, through the imagination, another meaning to things. The cap of a water bottle can easily become a city for a child. A stick from a tree can even transform into a coach. As an artist, you certainly play, but with seriousness, after having thought about and weighed up. What most of us kick out and throw away becomes raw material for your artwork. And just like Picasso who put together a saddle and the handlebars of a bicycle in order to make an assembly, you bring together objects by linking them to each other, by juxtaposing them, by attaching them temporarily. Each work is like an idea, a photo that has not yet been taken, an impulse or a thought. It tells us where to look, invites us to connect form and space. Moreover, the viewer often becomes a party, a protagonist, an accomplice, especially in performances. The viewer becomes a carrier, a base, and therefore sees himself reduced to an object. The moments are modeled in the image of a sculptor who shapes a face in clay. Mohammed Alani not only borrows or cites visible elements from recent art history, but also principles that he turns upside down. Nevertheless, Mohammed Alani is above all an artist who intuitively constructs images that enhance the banality of everyday life with a playful simplicity.

Philippe Van Cauteren

Director of S.M.A.K. Ghent museum

Ghent, 23 February 2018