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Ogress, goddess, Moroccan, Canaanite, djinn, marabout, seductive, monstrous, feminine, animal.... Aïcha Kandisha is all of this at once and even more.
On the occasion of the Mediterranean Season carried by the Institut français, the ICI team continues its collaboration with invited curator Sonia Recasens – initiated in 2024 with The Spirit of Gesture, the inaugural exhibition of the renovated spaces of ICI Léon. She brings this time her new project, which takes as its starting point the legends surrounding Aïcha Kandisha, in order to explore the numerous ogress figures that populate the imaginaries of the Mediterranean region and beyond. The exhibition The Ball of Ogresses shifts the gaze from the fear inspired by Aïcha Kandisha towards what the narratives that forged her myth reveal. Ogresses and goddesses, monstrous and seductive, nurturing and devouring, protective and harmful: Aïcha Kandisha and her sister figures become the prism for an exploration of the intimate, the body and collective memory. These hybrid and transgressive creatures crystallize fears around night, femininity, sexuality. From pre-Islamic mythologies to Sufi ceremonies, from Amazigh tales to Mesopotamian legends, thirteen women artists of different generations and geographies voice at ICI the voices of those who narrate the ogresses and claim them. They question the paradoxes of these figures both feared and venerated, objects of desire and fright, which through the power of orality escape any fixed representation. The artists Khadija El Abyad, Rim Battal, Amina Benbouchta, Imane Elkabli, Lucile Gautier, Nadira Husain, Saodat Ismailova, Kubra Khademi, Rim Mejdi, LALLA RAMI, Lynn S.K., Silina Syan, and Nil Yalter. About the curator Sonia Recasens (1985, France) is an art historian, art critic and independent exhibition curator. She develops an engaged, sensitive and intuitive critical and curatorial practice, exploring issues related to the intimate, the body, memory and migration. Winner of the Special Jury Prize – AICA France Prize 2019, Sonia Recasens collaborates regularly with art centers, museums and publishing houses for publications, conferences or exhibitions. Among her recent exhibitions: The Spirit of Gesture, 2024 (ICI, Paris); Aïta, poetic fragments of a Moroccan scene, 2025 (Frac Méca Nouvelle Aquitaine, Bordeaux).
Admission: Opening reception Friday, September 25, 6pm to 11pm Free admission, subject to availability —- Exhibition with free admission Wednesday to Sunday 12pm to 7pm Closed Monday, Tuesday and public holidays —- FOR GROUPS Free admission for groups of 8 or more
Source: paris.fr — photo: LALLA RAMI