Essai : Tardy, Musée Matisse
Extrait…
… Finally, KRM came across the genuine desert walls in the form of the khaïma, a traditional tent and symbol of Sahrawi people, who still live in their tents in the desert, in the courtyards, or on the roofs of houses. They are not interested in new tents, but in the countless textile fragments from tents and women’s clothing that the sand has net finished digesting. They search for and collect everything that has not been recycled, to create a library of samples of used fabrics.
They decided to make a statement by transforming them into a single piece, which is both substrate and a medium at the same time, without renouncing their style and creative process that they adapt to an environment where there are no models and urban signs. They preserve the rectangle, that of the wall, of the khaïma, which brings the family, the tribe, and, symbolically, the nomadic society together within a « terrestrial » limit. The composition begins without a template and, on the reverse side of the patchwork, and will ultimately be sewn together by hand.
Very quickly, the artefacts, used previously, proved to be as meaningless as they were difficult to use given the fragility and wear of the fabrics. Right off the bat, this work is unique because of its abstract character that is reminiscent of the large fields of colour of the Colour Field movement, associated with American abstract expressionism, and the Pattern Painting associated with patchworks. But if, like the latter examples that draw their inspiration from repeated decorative motifs and Matisse’s cut paper, the compositions accentuate the impression of two dimensions, expansion and visual balance, they also stand out by their sensitive character and sense of the past.