The questions that Youssef Boubekeur explores through his series of drawings thwarting human / animal decompartmentalization 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 crosses humanity. The Individual experiences, in a certain way, the pangs of captivity, and the confrontation between his animal part and his civilized part takes on an unprecedented relief.
A particularly inspiring test for the artist, who usually feeds on stories of forms of cohabitation between the human species and the animal kingdom that challenge our preconceived categorizations. Today he observes his contemporaries on hold, in expectation devoid of prospects, like caged lions, grappling with madness.
Man deprived of his way of life, of his sociability, as the captive animal can be of his natural ecosystem, loses his bearings and his horizon. Youssef Boubekeur scrutinizes with the precision of his blue pen line how our senses are affected, loss of taste and smell: what do the looks say about our inner torments? What animal is sleeping or waking up in us? Will concern for the Other open up to paradoxical lessons from the animal world?
HOLY THOUGHTS, 2020
Lithograph on Arches Velin rives 250 gr paper
75,5x60,5 inch
The artist experiences this suspension of time in the countryside, in the heart of nature, and pursues his artistic projects to the test of this feeling which is both intimate and collective. Youssef Boubekeur inaugurated a series of drawings inspired by the way in which different countries of the world, different cultures, have historically experienced cohabitation with felines, emblems of wild animals. Felines in real size, 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 to protect human life, or the sacred status of tigers in India, to which funeral rituals similar to those of loved ones were organized. It tells the story of a place in the world to be shared.
After these weeks of isolation during which, sometimes, it is the animals who have visited us, we are impatiently awaiting the moment when we can once again take our hands, touch each other. The hand, this specific tool of Man who opens it to civilization, that of the craftsman who manufactures, that of the artist who sublimates, this outstretched hand that keeps us from savagery, will be the next creative search for Youssef Boubekeur. The hands of artists, we will have to give them thanks, they will be precious to re-enchant the world.
