Adventitious, process and resistance
Manually handling and assembling everyday items I have collected are the processes that shape my work.
I am 168 cm tall, with 75-cm-long arms and a handspan of 18 cm. I don’t have outstanding physical strength but a lot of resistance. This is all that defines me as an artist.
It is also important to me to include people with different and unusual profiles in my reflections and in creating my projects, as it allows me hone this practice and consolidate it in a tangible reality.
By letting myself be led by gestures and words that spontaneously arise during the creative process, I discover an imaginary place. A point in the universe in which dualities are reconciled and opposites stop being so binary and connect. A unit comprising elements that are so different that they become inseparable. An environment of resistance against the norm derived from the artistic creation that can be shared with others in specific events and moments, such as exhibitions, festivals and anniversaries.
For me, it is important to stop at this point of exchange. The exhibitions represent a pause in the search that orientates me to shape the meeting between the fruits of my labour and the audience. None of this process has an end, as the result is no more important that what comes before it. Neither is it something static, but fleeting, and it must be able to be deconstructed to be reconstructed again if need be.
Just as nature is in constant movement, this result or ‘moment of pause in the search’ represents another stage in life. Therefore, we get to another kind of resistance which could be considered as inherent to artistic practice. If you consider that the exhibited piece is a transitory and fleeting object, you are fighting against a capitalist system, which at present lacks any meaning. In this environment, you confer freedom on the objects by allowing them to be unattainable and you lose the control over the fate of ‘the work of art’.
As a result, we need to consider new archival forms. In fact, bringing this reflection to life would be much more interesting if other disciplines that were not necessarily linked to the world of art were brought together and integrated. Once at this point, we could ask ourselves, what could we use to capture living art in the purest sense of the word; art in movement that continuously evolves at the pace of everything in its surroundings…
The artist as an adventitious plant.
In agricultural terms, adventitious plants are those that sprout up naturally in
an environment without having been intentionally planted and are known as
‘spontaneous’ vegetation.
For Descartes, adventitious ideas are those which impact on your spirit and originate from sensory experiences.
And this is possibly the greatest part of our work: by freeing ourselves from everything that is considered established and beliefs about what we should do, seeking mechanisms or ‘creative rituals’ which may lead us to simple, instinctive, unique and own ideas, and work to be unpredictable and spontaneous, like adventitious plans or the butterfly effect.
Pierre Zaoui talks about ‘discretion as an act of resistance’. The artist holds out against the world by discretion and the uniqueness of their creation allowing it to sprout and slowly grow with subtlety, like a weed. Similarly, by working to bolster their difference by being humble, without the need for speeches or explanations, reminiscent of the complexity of the world with their mere presence, their use of metaphors and the impossibility of possessing unshakeable and universal truths.
What miracle allows the first shoots to sprout?
Looking at these clay bricks, I wonder who could tell their story when I am no longer here. Some are from Tunisia, others from Sharjah and others from Pakistan. All of them bear the traces of those who were there.
In the end, these objects have assumed the role of intermediaries, cobbles that served as a pretext for finding the other, travelling the world, shifting the world order and preparing fertile ground.
mainly composed of fire-baked clay slabs, 2024.
In this photograph we are in Belkhir, in the south of Tunisia. We spent hours kneading clay, sharing our differences and working out the things that perhaps we did have in common. After having seen this visible and invisible elements arise, I am still searching for this seemingly imaginary place.
Did everything vanish in an instant? It was all baked on the fire.
Now it’s morning. What remains in the ashes?
The ashes are the fertiliser. The end is also a new beginning.
In the end the unexpected experiences have left their mark on the bodies and land.
Discretion is inherent in the nature of the traces.
If you look closely at these traces, you will see that there are lots of invisible pips that will become a seed.
Let’s search for it together.
Where each of us considers it attainable.
It’s time to get our hands dirty.
Can we make out another way yet?
Something has germinated brilliantly.
Believe me. Adventitious plants are able to grow even on a heap of dung.
Férielle Doulain – Biography
Férielle Doulain-Zouari is a French-Tunisian artist who was born in Paris in 1992 and lives and works in Tunisia.
Through the use of contemporary manual techniques, she questions the forms in which meeting, reconciliation and transformation can be represented materially. Her work is presented as in situ installations and inspired by the environment, elements of daily life and the history and matters associated with them.
The creative process represents a fundamental part of her projects. Conception of a piece must be coherent with the context. Most of the time, the artist opts to work with local artisans and materials from the country, which allows her to anchor her work in a specific reality.
Throughout this journey, the references to manual work make up an essential part of the creation, together with the desire to generate conversations and interrogations from a visual language.