Ali Cherri's Envisagement at Fondation Giacometti

Ali Cherri's exhibition 'Envisagement' at the Fondation Giacometti-Institut in Paris runs until March 24, 2024. The show pairs Cherri's transformed archaeological objects with works by Alberto Giacometti. Cherri, born in Lebanon in 1976 and based in Paris, is represented by Galerie Imane Farès. Since 2017, the Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne acquired his installation 'Petrified/Fragments I' (2016), featuring thirty archaeological fragments, a skull cast, a taxidermied bird, and repurposed objects on a light table, shown alongside the film 'Petrified'. Cherri's engagement with archaeology stems from the precarious state of the National Museum of Beirut during the civil war, where artifacts were hidden in sandbags and concrete. In 2022, he was in residence at the National Gallery in London. For 'Envisagement', Cherri selects Giacometti drawings and sculptures, juxtaposing them with incomplete archaeological objects he acquires at auction, adding heads, feet, limbs, tears, and ocular prostheses from different eras. The exhibition's axial scenography directs all works toward the viewer, creating a metaphor for exile and migration, as seen in his film 'Le Barrage' (2022) and the sculpture 'L'Homme qui débarque' (2023), which combines an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus head with a modeled body and a plaster protective boat.