The questions that Youssef Boubekeur explores through his series of drawings that subvert the divisions between Man and Animal to trace behavioral analogies and remind us that the path from savagery to civilization is not always linear find a singular resonance in this troubled period that humanity is going through. In a certain sense, the individual experiences the anguish of captivity, and the confrontation between his animal and civilized parts takes on an unprecedented dimension.
A particularly inspiring experience for the artist, who usually draws inspiration from the stories of forms of coexistence between the human species and the animal kingdom that challenge our preconceived categorizations. Today, he observes his contemporaries in a state of arrest, in a state of waiting devoid of perspective, like lions in cages, struggling with the absurd.
Man deprived of his way of life and his sociality, just as the captive animal can be deprived of its natural ecosystem, loses its bearings and its horizons. Youssef Boubekeur examines with the precision of his blue Bic pen how our senses are affected: loss of taste and smell: what do the gazes of our inner torment tell us? Which animal is dormant or awakening within us? Will the concern for the Other open itself to the paradoxical lessons that come from the animal world?
STUNNING IDEAS, 2020
Lithography on Arches Velin paper, 250 gr
75.5 x 60.5 cm
The artist lives this suspension of time in the countryside, in the midst of nature, and continues his artistic projects in the face of this feeling, both intimate and collective. Youssef Boubekeur has inaugurated a series of drawings inspired by the way different countries in the world, different cultures, have historically lived coexistence with the felines, symbols of the wild animal. Real-size felines, draped in human adornments, staged in the natural element that was theirs. The work is imbued with the paradox that has sometimes led to the extinction of species in order to protect human life, or the sacred status of tigers in India, to whom similar funeral rituals were organized, like those of loved ones. It tells the story of a place in the world to be shared.
After these weeks of isolation during which, sometimes, it was the animals that visited us, we eagerly await the moment when we can once again take each other’s hand, touch each other. The hand, that specific tool of Man that opens us to civilization, the hand of the craftsman who crafts, the hand of the artist who elevates, this outstretched hand that keeps us from the savagery—that will be Youssef Boubekeur’s next creative pursuit. The hands of artists, we will have to thank them for; they will be precious in bringing the world back to life.
