“These works give a luminous image of Arab culture”, enthuses Claude Lemand this Thursday, February 2. With his wife, France Lemand, the collector offered 1,877 works to the Arab World Institute (IMA) in 2018, bringing the number of pieces in his collections to 3,400. “We are becoming the first collection of modern and contemporary Arab art in the West”, assures Jack Lang, president of the cultural institution, campaigning for a fourth term.
Among these recently acquired works, great signatures of the XXe and of the XXIe century, like the Algerian Abdallah Benanteur, the Syrian Youssef Abdelké or the American-Lebanese Etel Adnan. The museum, which occupies four floors of the IMA, will be completely redesigned in order to bring together old and new collections. Construction should begin in 2023 for a period of three years.
“The artists have reinvested their culture”
In this new setting, contemporary creations will be put into perspective with the history of Arab countries, in order to show “how artists have reinvested their culture”, analyzes Nathalie Bondil, director of the museum and exhibitions.
Like this oil on canvas, Africa before 1 (1963), by the Algerian Mohammed Kadda, an abstract painting tinged with ocher and brown representing a prehistoric fresco, like those in the Sahara desert dating back more than eight thousand years. Or painting on metal LOVE blue white red (2014) by the Franco-Algerian visual artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah. Words in Arabic are written there in the three colors making up the French flag.