I like America, Tribute to Jacques Derrida

El Malecon, La Havana

May 22 - June 22, 2015

Curator: Orlando Britto Jinorio

 

In the second edition of Detrás del muro – in the XII Biennial between last May and June – the international presence was very strong, involving prominent artists from Cuba, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Dominican Republic, Morocco and Germany. I have never been interested in localism because, sometimes, that term makes us misunderstood. I like the universalization beyond borders and if there is talent and conviction it does not matter if it is Cuban or not. The project Behind the Wall is in the city and that is the most important thing, that the Cuban elevates his spirit through art.

 

 

Juan Delgado Calzadilla, May 2015

 

 

The public intervention I Like America, tribute to Jacques Derrida, consists in the sudden appearance of a jumble of horse jumping bars painted in the colors of the American flag in the middle of Paris’ Tuileries gardens and its many visitors.

 

Mounir Fatmi uses here a frequent material in his work, horse jumping bars, and questions with this installation the relation of individuals to reality in the form of the nation, borders and identity. He also tries to define the relations between contemporary art and the current cultural and political context. I Like America is an installation with multiple inspirations ranging from the philosophical notions developed by Jacques Derrida to Jasper Johns’ series of paintings of the American flag and Joseph de Beuys’ “social sculptures”. In 1974, Joseph de Beuys entitled his first performance I Like America and America Likes Me, during which he spent three days locked in an American art gallery with a coyote, an emblematic animal for Native Americans.

 

A tribute to Jacques Derrida, the installation is a work of deconstruction: by operating the transformation and fragmentation of the American flag, it aims to break down the concepts of nation and identity and observes in detail their mechanisms and concrete effects. Translating these issues spatially, it questions the very foundations of reality by experimenting its power of resistance and mobilizes the viewers’ cognitive, intellectual and physical capacities. This piece establishes itself as an obstacle, which in turn is defined as an esthetic strategy elaborated by Mounir Fatmi and developed through several installations using various materials.

 

The obstacle forces the viewers to stop and take a meditative break, inviting them to imagine and elaborate their own strategies for getting through, around or beyond it. In this way, I Like America is an invitation to become aware of the power exercised on individuals by the ideas of nation, borders or territory and to overcome these very notions that tend to hinder the possibility of difference and the desire to move about freely. The familiar setting of the Tuileries gardens can be seen across an entanglement of bars: the installation, placed in a context the public is familiar with, upsets people’s habits and modifies their perception of the world, the way they conceive it and act in it by proposing an active interpretative framework.

 

 

Studio Fatmi, December 2010