Running along or appearing in the middle of the walls, falling from the ceiling, the plants and minerals of Safia Hijos suggest as much the resilience of nature as the impossibility of controlling it, making its way where we do not expect it. His ceramics evoke a perennial nature, robust, abandoned on the edge of a sidewalk or in the corner of a faded or too welcoming building. Appearing, sometimes with subtlety and sobriety, sometimes with sass and abundance, these elements remind us of the power of this nature, both desirable and unwanted, surviving and intruding in the most unlikely places.

The pieces are made of coils of clay and the application of enamels of different colors. The work of Safia Hijos, although frozen by the fire, represents the movement of plants in the wind or the water trickling in every gap within its reach. Far from representing a real nature, this series of ceramics depicts a phantasmal vision of our natural environment. The idea was more to endow the exhibition space with a new story made of hazards and elsewhere than to bring the plant and mineral world inside. Safia Hijos depicts this exoticism with an assumed naivety inspired by the paintings of Douanier Rousseau and his way of juxtaposing colors, vegetation and characters to elaborate a kind of two-dimensional decor. In the same way, his sculptures evoke some theater scenography painted without perspective but placed in volume in space.

In the rooms the grass grows, to sleep you need to push sang Claude Nougaro in Bidonville. In dialogue with the space, the work of Safia Hijos explores the paradox of being considered as much as a source of anxiety as a source of life, biodiversity and force of nature.

 

Thibaut Wauthion