Latifa Echakhch

Born 1974 | El Khnansa
Lives and works Martigny and Vevey

In her multi-disciplinary works, Latifa Echakhch challenges assumptions and reflects the fragility of modernism. Her series of paintings, Night Time (As Seen by Sim Ouch) are based on photographs taken by the photographer Sim Ouch, one of the artist’s friends. Characterised by high exposure and enigmatic compositions in which bodies and limbs are entangled or twisted, the images capture the nightlife of their friendship group in Lausanne, Switzerland. Echakhch employs a naive fresco method of painting to transpose these images onto canvas, which she treats with a mix of concrete and vinyl glue. Once set, Echakhch cuts into the dense material, a violent and labour-intensive process that leaves cracks and voids in the composition, revealing fragmented bodies in motion below. The striations in the concrete speak simultaneously to the geography of maps and the mountainous landscape that surrounds her studio in Switzerland, and to histories of formalism and abstraction.

Latifa Echakhch, Night Time (As Seen by Sim Ouch) 2022. Acrylic and concrete on canvas. 200.2×150.2cm. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery, Supported by Pace Gallery and Institut français. © Latifa Echakhch