Luc Chery 2000 – 2003

In 2000 I took my son to the photography school in Arles where I met Luc Chery who was to become my husband in 2002. He came to Palestine and did projects with Al-Quds University, Bethlehem University and Al-Ma’mal (Huda Imam, Jerusalem April 2010)

Chery was involved with Al-Ma’mal for several years and conducted two workshops as well as presenting his own photography and exhibition projects:

The first workshop I did (in July 2001) was called "Jerusalem Ma Ville" and was conducted with Al-Quds University students in cooperation with the French Consulate and Al-Ma'mal. The aim was to lead students to a renewed appreciation of their city beyond the usual evidence on the surface.

Unfortunately no images of this project are currently available but in a statement written at the time Luc Chery wrote:

This photographic work was accomplished between September 2000 and May 2001, a date which marked the beginning of a new era of uncertainty and conflict: the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada. Although within the heart of a conflict, this collection does not show any picture of war or confrontation, however, the day to day life, attitudes and expressions unveil tension and darkness. The images of architecture we see tend to point to an unrelenting process of destruction/reconstruction or perhaps re-composition. So many buildings are themselves affected by questions of identity through patches, scars, emptiness and additions all strongly marking the uncertainty and fragility of any possible definition of the place (From exhibition statement, 2001).

Chery’s workshop at Bethlehem University in 2002 introduced young Palestinians to a wide variety of materials within the context of contemporary art, particularly the creative possibilities of working with recycled materials. This was consistent with Al-Ma’mal’s shift in focus for workshop content that had occurred in 2001 following an assessment of workshop results over the first few years.

Here, the aim was to introduce new relationships with scraps and material, alteration and destruction and then to rebuild autonomous artworks out of this process (Luc Chery, June 2010).

Objects and materials were collected from domestic and industrial waste according to their ‘expressive uniqueness’ and there were conceptual echoes of Chery’s previous workshop project:

Cracks and rips mark their status as objects that have been tossed about, split up and marginalized. Such scattered fragments can be staged in devices enabling interplay of shapes and allotting them a renewed credit. When rearranged, they become small autonomous worlds endowed with impermanence and flexibility. As they are assembled, the scraps and fragments interact in floating layers and suspensions, in crushed-down volumes, in shadows and transparencies where they find a new inscription, a new belonging (From workshop proposal, 2002).  

 

 

 

As Al-Ma’mal’s artist-in-residence in 2003 Chery presented a two-part exhibition called Les Habitats-Ode to the Refugee Camps. One series of photographs showed structures in Gaza’s refugee camps enclosed by cloth or plastic sheeting. A parallel series showed spaces in Bordeaux that had been specially constructed by Chery from discarded plastic, fabric and furniture. When the images were juxtaposed it was sometimes hard to differentiate between the two.

The project not only conveyed a sense of the confinement in the enclosed spaces of the refugee camps but also gave an empathetic picture of a people surviving by converting waste into a priceless commodity that provides shelter.
 

  

 

  

Luc Chery Website