

Nicène Kossentini Tunisian, b. 1976
Engraving one's name on a tree trunk is an ancient gesture to resist against oblivion and disappearance. To engrave, does it not mean both digging into the material and fixing in memory? This series of engravings of ancient texts by the Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, on Ethiopian wooden tablets, is the continuation of a long series of works that questions memory and forgetting through the act of writing. These concepts are explored in 'Engraved' through the disarticulation of the text. Missing letters from certain words render each text incomplete. The connection between letters and words is thus broken. The disarticulated text is here like a memory. Engraved in the mind, it detaches itself from the continuity of time and fixes itself in the present.
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