Lilith encore

This installation is a reference to Lilith, a multi-faceted biblical character often identified as Adam’s first wife and who was punished for refusing to submit to his authority. With her installation, Yosra Mojtahedi has dedicated a flowing, vibrant shrine shot through withmemory and desire to this figure of indocility.

Drawing on an imagined vision of the gushing fountains of Roman squares and the pleasure she feels on seeing them, Yosra Motjahedi has conceived a truly foundational work of art. Her starting point is grounded in treatises on anatomy and dissection, books in which the scopophiliac impulse – i.e. seeing and possessing the other solely by looking – merges with the libidinal impulse. Her encounter with glassblower Nadia Festuccia led to a closed-circuit sculpture through which bodily fluids and mother’s milk (or possibly that of the legendary she-wolf at the fratricidal origin of Rome) seem to flow. Organs without bodies, mutant fossils, flayed skin and silicone skins, the ebb and flow bring the sculpture to life, while possibly embodying the mechanics of desire. Its organic aspect is the result of robotics; soft and hardelements, animate and inanimate, profane and sacred intermingle in a sensual dance of flesh, materials, cables and liquids. – Extract from a text written by Marion Zilio in 2023.

Yosra Mojtahedi (Iran) is currently in residence as part of the 2-12 programme.

Presented with the assistance of Claire Luna

Sculpture installation, movement and sound, 2023
Ceramics, blown glass, latex, liquid, pipes, metal, pumps, loudspeaker

Glass sculptures made in collaboration with Nadia Festuccia’s Vetromaghie workshop in Rome, Italy
Sound: Timothée Couteau
Voice: Hani Mojtahedy

Installation produced as part of the PRIX WICAR residency in partnership with Espace Le Carré -and the municipalities of Lille and Rome

*Winner of the Fondation François Schneider “Talents contemporains” prize.This installation is a reference to Lilith, a multi-faceted biblical character often identified as Adam’s first wife and who was punished for refusing to submit to his authority. With her installation, Yosra Mojtahedi has dedicated a flowing, vibrant shrine shot through withmemory and desire to this figure of indocility.