Ryoko Sekiguchi & Joana Hadjithomas
The Pernod Ricard Foundation welcomes the artist and filmmaker Joana Hadjithomas and the poet and writer Ryoko Sekiguchi, as part of the « Poetry Platform » cycle.
The starting point of this meeting is the recent publication by Editions P.O.L of 961 hours in Beirut (and 321 accompanying dishes), a luminous portrait of a city and a cookbook at the same time, resulting from two stays of Ryoko Sekiguchi in the Lebanese capital.
For her part, Joana Hadjithomas develops, with Khalil Joreige, from this same Lebanese context, one of the most inventive and suggestive contemporary works, questioning the making of images, the construction of imaginary and the writing of history.
This conjunction denotes the astonishing affinity that brings together their approach and their sensibility. For the works of Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, like Ryoko Sekiguchi’s books, elaborate another geopolitics of bodies and gestures through the gaze, the invention, the transmission.
Filmmakers and artists, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige create formal and thematic links between photography, video, installation, performance, text, sculpture and cinema that engage a reflection on the aesthetic, representational and political issues at stake. Mostly based on documents, they investigate disappearances during the Lebanese civil wars, a forgotten space project from the 1960s, scams via spam or underground geological and archaeological sections of cities: Circle of Confusion, Lasting Images, The Lebanon Rocket Society, SCAMS, I Stared Beauty So Much and Unconformities.
Their films include the documentaries Khiam 2000-2007, The Strange Story of the Lebanese Space Adventure, ISMYRNE; and the fiction films Around the Pink House, A Perfect Day, I Want to See, and the upcoming Memory Box.
They exhibit all over the world. Their films, installations and sculptures have won them numerous awards and prizes, including the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2017.
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige are represented by the Galerie In Situ – fabienne leclerc.
Ryoko Sekiguchi is a poet, writer and translator. She has developed a remarkable body of work in French, regardless of the literary genre she explores. Her concern is to insert into the text « the voice of others, of another voice », at the crossroads of cultures, practices and languages.
She has published books of poetry Calque, Héliotropes, a narrative Deux marchés, again, essays and chronicles: Ce n’est pas un hasard about the Fukushima disasters, La Voix sombre about the remanence of the recorded voice, or Nagori, la nostalgie de la saison qui s’en va.
An important part of her work has to do with food, tastes and flavors of the world. Her recent publications include La Terre est une marmite, Bayard, Le Curry japonais, dix façons de le préparer, L’Epure, Sentir, JBE Books.
Her books have been translated into several languages.
