Hakima El Djoudi's 'L'Armée des ombres' at Frac Corse

At the citadel of Corte, the Frac Corse presents Hakima El Djoudi's exhibition 'L'Armée des ombres,' featuring her ongoing series of small soldiers made from folded Chinese yuan banknotes, with Mao's portrait on their backs. The show spans fifteen years of her work, including videos filmed in Corsica, Marseille (Influencé), and Seoul (Magic City). El Djoudi's pieces evoke absence and presence through anonymous bodies, a hidden drone squadron, faceless women, and horses without sulkies. Painted photographs of Spahis, colonial soldiers, become 'disarmed signs of war' as described by Jean-Yves Jouannais. Her cinema references include Stanley Kubrick's The Killing in the soundscape of The Outsiders. Videos like Influencé create suspense by following an ambiguously gendered figure. Works initially appear gentle but reveal darker undertones, as in the video L'Ennui au bout des lèvres, featuring Natacha Atlas's cover of Mon amie la rose. The horse-racing theme in The Outsiders opens to diverse social classes and generations. The sulkies resemble spiders, suggesting persistence over fatalism, echoing Joseph Kessel's 1943 novel L'Armée des ombres, adapted by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1969.