MONOLITOGRAPHY

ABOUT MONOLITOGRAPHY

In 2020, #AliArkady #discovered some #monoliths #stones, about a hundred years old, that the #BeauxArts were planning to throw away. He was overwhelmed by these stones, the ages they had passed, the importance of their stories, and all the #culture and tradition they symbolize. At the #collective #exhibition of the Mesiti #workshop to which he is attached in Beaux-Arts, he exposed the stones for the first time and showed his videos, having overlaid the stones and spread them throughout the gallery. After this first stage of #deconstructing the #classical use of a stone, he combines this #discovery with another one: lithography. Invented by #Aloys_Senefelder in 1796 but definitively developed in the first years of the 19th century, #lithography, from the #Greek word lithos: "stone" and #graphein: "to write", is a printing technique that allows the creation and reproduction in multiple copies of a line executed with ink or pencil on a limestone. This #technique reminds Ali Arkady of the #printing of old #newspapers and links his works to his #background as a #journalist.

Through his art, Ali seeks to tell stories, to transmit what he has seen and heard. He wants to talk about the past, the present, the future. The choice of the stone as support anchors his work in a #relationship with time. Specifically today, in the #digital age, it leaves a timeless trace to his #testimonies. The #superimposition of his #photographs on these #stones puts in tension different periods and subjects. His works create a relationship between these stories, these #moments that were not meant to cross each other. Ali Arkady calls this #technic #Monolithography . He writes stories with these works and more deeply, writes History in #images, drawing from the sources of the #Euphrates and #Tigers, #clay, and the first writings of the world. #Photography #etymologically means writing with light. By bringing together the symbol of monolith stone, on which the first images were painted and the first laws were engraved, and the testimony of light through photography, naturally emancipating itself from the heaviness of the stone, Ali Arkady uses the very #foundations of #History to bring out his #contemporary own #story.

Laure Despres and Elias Wallach