Qacentina Blues
Room 3
In Qacentina – the Turkish name for Constantine – I experienced a strange state of limbo between the world of memory and that of my quest. Emotions superimposed themselves. I was a stranger yet everything was familiar.
In the hotel room where my grandfather died of a stroke, dreams invaded my sleep, and a date, 21 December 1962, the day when La Dépêche de Constantine announced on its front page the “Sudden death of Doctor J. Elbaz.”
A search: up, down, here, there, up again, down again… Places tell a story, conjure images of a past of which nothing remains. Grievous traces on white marble gravestones allow themselves to be stared at. I pace up and down rows of dead people forgotten by time itself. The ancestor lights up for the Shabbat, the imam begins Friday evening prayer.
This island suspended on the wings of time does not fear eternity. On this bench where my grandfather used to sit, only this moment belongs to both of us.
The Rhumel sings of Constantine. An eternal, desolate and hopeless rock, Constantine stands proud and immortal. We have to wash ourselves after so many dead.
- Fantastic island, Constantine, 2007. Diasec 60 x 60 cm. Left to right : The cliff, My grand-father bench, The bridge
- The cliff
- My grand-father bench
- The bridge
- Look at the sky, La rue de France. Diasec 60 x 60 cm
- Look at the sky, Street light - Diasec 60 x 60 cm
- Look at the sky, cynagogue of the Damrémont street. Diasec 60 x 60 cm
- Sidi Rashed’s mausoleum, diasec 60 x 60 cm - Serie the impregnable
- Sidi Rashed’s bridge, diasec 60 x 60 cm - Serie the impregnable
- The gulies, diasec 60 x60 cm -Serie the impregnable
- Rhumel, diasec 60 x60cm
