De fil et de rencontres
Marion Boehm with Roger Moukarzel
A curatorial project conceived and initiated by Yasmine Azzi-Kohlhepp
De fil et de rencontres was born from an encounter initiated by Yasmine Azzi-Kohlhepp between two artistic worlds: that of Lebanese photographer Roger Moukarzel, and that of Marion Boehm, whose textile practice transforms the image into a surface of memory, materiality and reinvention.
The project takes as its starting point Jamãl, a photographic series by Roger Moukarzel. In these portraits of Arab women, light, costumes, accessories, hairstyles and make-up compose a world that is at once theatrical, mysterious and deeply visual.
Invited to intervene freely on these images, Marion Boehm does not cover the photographs: she extends them. Through the addition of fabrics, patterns, textures and colours, she introduces a new layer of reading. Her textile compositions reactivate the portraits, heightening their frontality, decorative force and scenic presence. The female figures become contemporary icons, traversed by references to the history of portraiture, textile traditions, Oriental imaginaries and visual circulations between cultures.
This collaboration rests on a subtle balance: preserving the photographic essence of Roger Moukarzel’s work while opening the image to another language. Textile does not merely illustrate the photograph; it reveals its tensions, silences and possibilities. It gives the portrait a tactile, almost narrative depth, as if each face became the point of entry into a wider story.
De fil et de rencontres thus explores how an image can be transmitted, transformed and inhabited by another artistic gesture. The project brings to light what is at play between photography and textile, between gaze and material, between visual memory and contemporary rewriting.
Presented within the framework of MENART FAIR at the Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain in Brussels, the exhibition unfolds in a place dedicated to dialogue between Eastern and Western cultures.
© AYN
