Saïd Afifi
Yemaya - Installation - 2018
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 20
Installation
The Yemaya project is a virtual-reality immersive installation, an attempt to reformulate a visual and poetic language using scientific tools and processes. It consists in deploying an oneiric staging based on certain modellings of caves, from the CNRS digital archive, entirely made with the technology of undersea photogrammetry, acoustic measurements from an active underwater sensor, which technological resources allow enhanced scientific observation of the undersea world, all with high resolution three dimensional visualisation.
The project offers a meditative and poetic excursion in which each detail is modelled like a musical vibration. It also encourages us to consider the question of the image, of forms of representation and their aesthetic and technological manifestations.
Saïd Afifi
Born in 1983 in Morocco Lives and works in Paris Graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan, Morocco, in 2008, and from the Fresnoy-Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing, in 2018
Exploring the potential and status of the digital image, Saïd Afifi is interested in the blurred boundaries between real and virtual spaces. In Yemaya ("the mother whose children are like fish"), named after an Afro-Caribbean goddess of the oceans, which he began in 2018, the artist teamed up with the CNRS to create a photogrammetry of an underwater cave, recreating a three-dimensional vision of the place thanks to the multiplication of the points of view captured, rendered by a device in virtual reality.
Exhibitions: 2022 Les Constellations de la terre, L'Atelier 21, Casablanca, Morocco (solo); Inspiré.e.s. Acte 2: Arts numériques, L'arTsenal, Dreux ; Rencontres de Bamako, Bamako, Mali 2021 État d'urgence d'instants poétiques, Jardin d'essai botanique, Rabat, Morocco; Paradis artificiels, Galerie Bacqueville, Lille 2019 Loop Barcelona, Museu d'Història de Catalunya, Barcelona; Festival Ambiance / Le devenir-monde, cinéma Les Colonnes, Blanquefort; Vice versa 5.0. Creative Crossborder Meeting, Mundaneum, Mons, Belgium 2018 (Re) Model the World, Pearl Art Museum, Shanghai
