"D'où vient la volonté de devenir artiste ? Pour Sonia Hamza, cela a commencé par des études de mode à Paris et à Londres et par le lancement d'une ligne de vêtements pour enfants. Mais ce n'est pas tout. Sonia a toujours eu deux autres grandes passions dans sa vie : Le Japon et la photographie. Ces passions l'ont amenée à déménager au Japon en 2013 pour poursuivre une histoire d'amour et découvrir une culture qui l'enchantait déjà. Une fois sur place, il lui est rapidement apparu que la photographie était ce qu'elle voulait poursuivre. Au début, elle l'a fait en cachette, craignant que les gens ne la jugent volage ou insignifiante, alors qu'elle venait d'arriver dans un nouveau pays et qu'elle jetait déjà aux orties une carrière bien établie. Elle avait aussi ses propres doutes. Était-elle assez bonne ? Cela avait-il un sens ? C'était une voie entièrement nouvelle. Sauf que ce n'était pas le cas : depuis des années, elle faisait toutes les photos pour sa propre ligne de vêtements et avait fini par aimer cette partie de son travail plus que la conception ou la fabrication des vêtements eux-mêmes. Ses craintes se sont rapidement concrétisées lorsqu'elle a dit à son partenaire et à sa famille ce qu'elle voulait et qu'elle a été ridiculisée. Dans six mois, il y aura quelque chose de nouveau, qu'est-ce que tu fais ? Sois raisonnable." Cette période décisive et turbulente au Japon n'a duré que trois mois, mais elle a changé le cours de sa vie.

S'ensuit une rupture et le sentiment de rejet et de mépris d'un pays et d'un homme qu'elle aimait. Sonia était revenue en France après trois mois et avait entièrement embrassé sa nouvelle orientation. Elle a abandonné son ancien métier, l'a complètement rejeté et s'est consacrée à la photographie et à l'exploration de ce nouveau médium. Dans une première série, elle se concentre sur les photos secrètes qu'elle a prises au Japon, les regroupant en triptyques, organisés davantage par la forme et la couleur que par le contenu ou le thème. Grâce à ces premiers travaux solides, elle trouve rapidement une représentation et une galerie pour exposer son travail en France.

Au fil du temps, elle s'est rendu compte que son passé dans la mode n'était pas une malédiction ou un fardeau, mais en fait un riche ensemble d'expériences et de compétences qu'elle pouvait mettre à profit et qui influencerait son travail d'une manière ou d'une autre, qu'elle le veuille ou non. Cette compréhension, ainsi que le besoin impérieux d'accepter les expériences qu'elle a vécues au Japon, l'ont amenée à créer sa série actuelle "Chants de laine". Cette série de portraits saisissants est basée sur des images fixes de conversations par skype avec son ancien partenaire au Japon. Les conversations pixelisées et hachées sont recréées au point de croix, une technique qu'elle avait déjà utilisée pour sa ligne de vêtements. Avec des détails complexes, mais déformés et surréalistes, son travail et sa vie passés se rejoignent dans quelque chose de nouveau - une série intime de portraits brodés. Quelque part entre l'abstraction et le photoréalisme, la sauvagerie vibrante et le minimalisme, ces portraits transmettent un sentiment de tension, un état de changement. L'échec, la croissance, le deuil et la nostalgie rayonnent d'eux, avec une beauté séduisante et obsédante."

Expo de Samedi 20 avril au Mardi 23 avril, de 15h à 18h, vernissage le Samedi à 18h.

Where does the drive to become an artist come from? For Sonia Hamza it started by studying fashion in Paris and London and launching a line of children’s clothing. But also it didn’t. Sonia always had two other major passions in her life: Japan and photography. These passions led her to move to Japan in 2013 to pursue a love story and to discover a culture she was already enchanted by. Once she was there, it quickly became clear to her that photography was what she wanted to pursue. At first she did it secretly, worried that people would think she was flighty or trivial, having just arrived in a new country and already throwing away an established career. She had her own doubts as well. Was she good enough? Did this make sense? It was an entirely new path. Except it wasn’t, she had been doing all of the photography for her own fashion line for years and had grown to enjoy that part of her job more than designing or making the actual clothing. Her fears quickly came true when she told her partner and his family what she wanted and was ridiculed.” In six months it will be something new, what are you doing? Be reasonable.” Her decisive, turbulent time in Japan only lasted three months but changed the course of her life.

There followed a breakup and the feeling of rejection and disdain from a country and a man that she loved. Sonia had returned to France after three months and entirely embraced her new direction. She shunned her old profession, completely rejecting it and devoting herself to photography and the exploration of this new medium. In an early series she focused on the secret pictures she had taken in Japan, grouping them into diptychs and triptychs, organized more by form and color than by content or theme. With this strong early work she quickly found representation and a gallery to show her work in France.

As time went by she realized that her background in fashion wasn’t a curse or a burden but in fact a rich set of experiences and skills that she could draw on- one which would influence her work one way or another, if she liked it or not. This understanding, along with the driving need to come to terms with the experiences she had in Japan, led her to create her current series ‘chants de laine’. This striking series of portraits is based on still images of skype conversations with her former partner in Japan. Pixelated and choppy conversations are recreated with cross-stitching, a technique she had previously incorporated in her clothing line. Intricately detailed but warped and surreal, her past work and her past life come together in something new- an intimate series of knit portraits. Somewhere between abstraction and photorealism, vibrant wildness and minimalism, these portraits convey a sense of tension, a state of change. Failure, growth, mourning and longing radiate from them, with a seductive, haunting beauty.

Vernissage Vendredi 3 Mars à 19h

Concrete. It can be a building material we use to pour into any shape, a solid and lasting thing. It can also be a conceptual term meaning real or tangible. It is also what the Iranian government has used to cover the mass graves of tens of thousands of dissidents and protestors. In the new exhibit by Sadaf Ahmadi at La Maison des Chapitres, it will be a bit of all of these, but it will also be something that will be broken. Sadaf has chosen pictures of the people who have died in the ongoing protests for women’s rights in Iran stemming from the now famous murder of Mahsa Amini, transferred them onto canvas, and covered them in concrete. Every day, the visitors will be invited to come and break the concrete; to break the real, tangible thing covering the dead, and reveal the faces underneath. In so doing, the audience is invited to break down the idea that what is happening now is stable, durable, or fixed.

Aida Roustami was a doctor in Iran. Outraged by the violence of the regime against Iranians protesting the murder of Mahsa Amini, Aida offered to treat injured protestors without denouncing them to the government forces intent on arresting anyone who turned out to share their anger and sadness. Aida died in police custody after days of torture, presumably because she would not share the names of her patients. She is one of the portraits in Sadaf’s exhibit. Like all the others, her portrait is covered in concrete, a 30x30cm gray square, bleak and void of any trace of what lies beneath. But this is not an exhibit of one death, rather of a mass campaign of terror. Rows and rows of gray, concrete squares fill the exhibit. A mass grave.

Majid Reza Rahnavard was a young man who had attended a protest. Riding in a car that was deemed suspicious by the notorious Basij police force, he was arrested and beaten. Leaving the courtroom after his death sentence was handed down, his broken arm in a sling and his eyes blindfolded, he responded to a reporter’s question that his final wish was that people would play happy music and dance by his grave. Majid Reza’s portrait is also a 30x30cm gray square. But there is joy in his eyes, and we discover that. In fact, all of the portraits are joyful and beautiful once they are revealed. The concrete falls away and while the death and the disappearance are still concrete, so is the joy and life in their eyes.

Mahsa Amini was not an activist or a protestor or a dissident. Mahsa Amini ran a small shop with her family. Her death was widely publicised because she was a religious woman wearing a veil- and because some of her hair was showing when she was arrested and subsequently died in police custody. Her death became the spark that set off the current explosion of anger shaking Iran today. Everyone who has been murdered in the protests since can be called an activist, because they are activated. And they are activated.

An important part of this exhibition is joy. Irrepressible joy and desire for life and freedom. There is no resistance against death and pain without life and joy. This exhibition is sincerely a celebration of life and joy, albeit in a recreation of a mass grave. But this time, as we break down the concrete boundary that hides death and pain, we reveal the strength of hope in the face of incredible violence and repression. We see images circulating of Iranian women burning their scarves and dressing how they please at incredible personal risk, and we must understand what is at stake: death and pain, joy and freedom. These things are all concrete, but we can break the ones we want.

Sadaf Ahmadi is an Iranian-born artist currently living in Sweden. CONCRETE will run from March 1-8, 2023 at La Maison des Chapitres in Forcalquier, France as she finishes her residency. The show will continue in Sweden at Kulturhus.