Latifa Echakhch's 'Tkaf' at Galerie Kamel Mennour

Latifa Echakhch's exhibition 'Tkaf' (meaning 'bad luck' in Arabic) at Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris (February 7 – March 10, 2012) features broken bricks arranged on the floor against a red-stained wall, inspired by a Moroccan sanctuary where sorcery is still practiced. The reddish colors also reference the 1980s TV special 'What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?', which claimed poppies turned red from soldiers' blood in World War I. The installation spills across three rooms, structuring the show. In the back, hats filled with black ink lie scattered on the floor in 'Mer d'encre', evoking absent bodies and death. Echakhch recently showed similar works at Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, designed by Mies van der Rohe, where the hats were Bavarian-style; here they recall Joseph Beuys's or Magritte's surrealist hats. A series of large tondos with dripped ink resemble melancholic black suns, referencing conceptual art. In the final room, a white shirt on a rack and jasmine garlands sold by street vendors create a scent that fades over the exhibition's duration. Echakhch's work often uses archaic materials, implied bodily presence, and art-historical references, as in her 2008 Tate Modern piece 'Speaker's Corner' with carbon paper sheets evoking revolutionary tracts and Yves Klein's blue. The exhibition also runs at Kunsthalle Basel from April 1 to May 27.