Pour cette fin d’année 2021, retrouver les travaux de Younes Baba-Ali dans une exposition solo “Dégrisements” du 10 septembre au 06 novembre 2021 à LA BF15, 11 Quai de la pêcherie, Lyon. Younes exposera également son travail “call for Prayer – Morse” du 30 septembre au 02 octobre 2021 à la Villa Gilet, 25 Rue de Chazière, Lyon et pour le week-end de clôture de l’exposition BXL Universel II : multipli.city le 9 septembre 2021, CENTRALE for contemporary art – Sint-Katelijneplein 44, Brussels.

Certainty, on a global scale, has rarely felt more fragile than during these times we live in. In the midst of a pandemic and ever-increasing global shifts, where viruses spread faster than knowledge, how have we re-interpreted our relationship to our daily realities, beliefs and the objects that inhabit them? Has superficiality seeped into our religions while superstition has enmeshed itself our daily lives? How do we give shape to our hopes, fears, irrational beliefs and spiritual crises in a world marked by mass migrations, blazing capitalism and digitalisation?

After a summer residency, Younes Baba-Ali presents his incursion into these questions in the exhibition solo exhibition Dégrisements that will open September 9 at Lyon’s La BF15. Semantically deconstructing iconography and re-interrogating our relation to objects against the backdrop of globalised consumerism, the artist explores the agency of specific patterns and symbols, habits and beliefs. The exhibition relates his research to the spiritual and esoteric context of Lyon, whose history is marked by major occult movements, from antiquity to the present day.

Bringing together both new and existing works, Dégrisements subtly yet humorously invites its public to sober up and look at things from a new angle. Blurring the boundaries between quotidian and sacred, spiritual and profane, object and artwork, the works on view explore how objects and our daily life are invested with spirituality, superstition and even superficiality while inviting their public to take part in their game.DEGRISEMENTS
 Opening: 09.09.2021 / 2-7 PM
10.09.2021 > 06.11.2021
La BF15, 11 Quai de la Pecherie Lyon (Fr)
Curated by Perrine Lacroix / Text by Aude Tournaye
Co-produced by Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris

During Operation Corruption & Dilution, a weekend of artistic installations and literary encounters initiated by the Villa Gillet and the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris, Younes’ work Call for Prayer – Morse will be exhibited. The artist also organises a performance with Androa Mindre Kolo on Saturday 2 October at 4pm in the framework of his solo exhibition Dégrisements.

In Call for Prayer – Morse, Younes Baba-Ali employs mechanisms directed towards the internalization of power in the realm of religion. In the installation, a megaphone broadcasts the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, digitized into binary Morse code. The megaphone crackles to life five times a day, at the precise times when the adhan reverberates through the streets. The verbal verses are overwritten by a universal language of emergency, signaling the dangers of proselytizing and demagoguery. The chants have been reduced to standardized binary sequences, to a series of mere dots and dashes and are thus transformed into the encoded, digital language of global information streams.
 OPERATION CORRUPTION ET DILUTION
30.09.2021 > 02.10.2021
Villa Gillet, 25 rue Chazière, Lyon (Fr)
Initiated by Villa Gillet and Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris
In the context of the exhibition BXL Universel II: multipli.city and on the occasion of its closing weekend, CENTRALE for Contemporary Art organises a workshop accompanying Younes’ work Sirens (2021). This workshop invites participants to become part of Younes Baba-Ali’s project SIRENS. The project departs from the desire to humorously dismantle the power of the controlling authority through sound strategies. In this case, the notorious sirens of the police car remain, but its familiar tools disappear as, instead of police cars, people mimic their sound using nothing but their voice. During this workshop, singer and voice coach Sara Carmona Navarro guides participants through their own mastery of the sound of sirens. Starting with a short introduction followed by breathing exercises, participants learn how to project their voice, infuse it with melody and finally to mimic police sirens as closely as possible. In this way, they become actors in the larger SIRENS project which invites us all to become part of a sonic reclamation of power.
 CLOSING WEEKEND,
BXL Universel II: multipli.city
11.09.2021
CENTRALE for contemporary art 
Sint-Katelijneplein 44, Brussels (Be)
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