Fragments de vie quotidienne

Year: 2013
Author/artist: Rita Alaoui (*1972)
Publisher: Al Manar

Fragments de vie quotidienne, titelpagina
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Fragments de vie quotidienne, title page

Fragments de vie quotidienne is the first artist’s book by the Moroccan artist Rita Alaoui and is also regarded as one of the first true artist’s book to emerge from Morocco. Alaoui studied painting at the Académie Julian in Paris and later at the Parsons School of Design in New York, where she graduated in 1996. Her transnational background and her constant traveling between Morocco and France have shaped a multifaceted practice. Her art often encompasses photography, installation, performance, sculpture and painting, but her creative process almost always begins with collecting: stones, plants, flowers, and so on. Her collector’s instinct and her multidisciplinary approach are evident in Fragments de vie quotidienne, in which a variety of techniques come together. Short texts with simple typography appear alongside original black-and-white photographs, adorned with embroidered threads, paintings, handwritten annotations, pasted-in pieces of fabric and ink drawings.

Reality and the imaginary

Alaoui’s international background is reflected in the book’s varied use of language: some titles are in English, whilst the accompanying texts are in French, and sometimes the other way around. The pasted-in photographs show (as in an autobiography) everyday scenes and found objects. In ‘One afternoon at the beach’, Alaoui shows what she had collected one day along the shore: a strand of seaweed, a pebble shaped like a head and one shaped like a pear. The banal arbitrariness of these personal and intimate moments stirs the reader’s memories.

  • Rita Alaoui, Fragments de vie quotidienne (p. 8–9)
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    Rita Alaoui, Fragments de vie quotidienne (p. 8–9)

The text is accompanied by images of the beach and black and gold ink. Small pieces of red sewing thread are attached to one of the photographs. A few pages further on, two pages are filled with nothing but the words ‘Paradis artificiels’ (a reference to Baudelaire’s essay on drugs and creativity), ‘Precious love’ and ‘Flower dream, offering, flight’. The three photographs show open hands holding a flower. A piece of translucent fabric is sewn onto one of the photographs, like the sleeve of a shirt, whilst in another photograph the handwritten words ‘precious love’ repeatedly extend from the fingers in the frame. Alaoui used gold ink on these pages, which might suggest that she is detaching herself from everyday life and entering something magical.

Malleable memories

All these interventions undermine the documentary character traditionally associated with photography. In Fragments de vie quotidienne, reality starts to merge with a world of dreams and intimacy. Not only through the combination of different media, but also because of the stark differences between text and photographs: the photographs capture specific moments in time, whilst the texts are poetic, dreamlike and timeless. This interplay emerges once more that same year in Alaoui’s performance La Madeleine de Proust (2013), in which she arranges photographs and varying objects, many of which also appear in Fragments de vie quotidienne, whilst reciting passages from Proust. In both works, memory is treated as something physical and malleable: memories can be rearranged and transformed.

The book as a multiple

Alaoui received a grant from the Prince Claus Fund for the project, which gave her the means to explore the graphic arts. Through a previous acquaintance with Alain Gorius, the director of publisher Al Manar, the work was ultimately published there in a print run of 36 copies. Each copy was individually altered by the artist through various additions and techniques. Although the texts and the photographs remain identical, each copy differs as a result from these interventions, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically. Set in Garamond and printed on plain BFK Rives paper, the book combines the reproducibility of a book with the uniqueness of a work of art.

Fragments de vie quotidienne, boekband
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Fragments de vie quotidienne, bookbinding

The book was bound in half-leather by Anne Bossenbroek in 2020. Originally, the work consisted of loose quires, which meant that the drawings and paintings did not always align properly. Bossenbroek resolved this issue by binding the quires tightly together, and fitting the whole book with a cover made from a collage of pieces of coloured paper.

Bibliographical description

Description: Fragments de vie quotidienne / Rita Alaoui - Paris : Al Manar, 2013. - 35 unnumbered pages ; 29 cm. 
Printer: S.A.I.G.
Edition: 36 copies on BFK River paper
This copy: No. 20 
Note: Signed by the artist. Bound by Anne Bossenbroek, Driebergen, 2020.
Shelfmark: KW KOOPM A10175

References

  • Marie Akar, ‘Al Manar. Chantre de la poésie méditerranéenne’, in Art & métiers du livre, 299 (november–december, 2013), pp. 32–41.
  • Marie Akar, ‘Fiche technique. Fragments de vie quotidienne’, in Art & métiers du livre, 299 (november–december, 2013), pp. 79–80.
  • Paul van Capelleveen, ‘Al Manar, Alain Gorius & Christine Alberti-Gorius’, in Artists & others. The imaginative French book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. Nijmegen, Vantilt Publishers, 2016, pp. 145–48.
  • Website of Rita Alaoui

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