Anna Malagrida's Traveling Exhibition at Centre photographique d'Île-de-France

The traveling exhibition of Anna Malagrida (Barcelona, 1970), originally from Madrid, is on view at the Centre photographique d'Île-de-France from January 8 to March 13, 2011. The photographer has been exploring chance encounters for about ten years, reversing the perspectives between observer and observed. The rhythm of her work is calm and detached, even when addressing burning political subjects, such as in 'Vues voilées' taken in Amman, where the erasure of the landscape reveals other realities. In 'Désert de Jordanie, 2006-2007,' a curtain is subjected to the gentle assaults of the wind, and in the video 'Danse de femme,' the artist evokes the condition of women in these places. Quoting Aimé Césaire, 'poetry is an insurrection against society,' the veil becomes a pacifist weapon. In 'Frontière franco-espagnole, 2009,' the bucolic atmosphere of a landscape is disturbed by astonishing explosions of red smoke, echoing popular traditions like 'correfoc' (literally 'running fires') carried by devils during folk festivals. The video loops, and the detonations disturb all these springs, turning the aerial trails into a metaphor for a wound inflicted on the earth, exhaling (when smoke bursts) and inhaling, like a breath of time. Looking behind screens of smoke, windows, or facades, Anna Malagrida restores aura to reality.