Latifa Echakhch

Born in 1974 in El Khnansa, Morocco. Lives and works in Switzerland. Latifa Echakhch often introduces associations with ‘cultural mementos’ that reveal a complicated relationships, where symbolic valency is subtracted, its absence suggesting an entirely new meaning and presence. Echakhch re-imagines and re-evaluates found objects and defamiliarizes the vernacular, questioning the meaning embedded in these and, in general, our own relationship and preconceptions towards such objects. Only when supposedly known objects have been emptied of their original meaning can they be read in many ways. Referencing and appropriating the archetypes, ideologies of modernism and beyond, she reflects on the often-prejudiced perception of national and religious identities in works that are both poetic and conceptual, and questions the semantics of cultural paradigms, providing instead what the artist calls “poetic transfiguration”. ...

francesca kaufmann gallery opened in January 2000. Since then, the gallery has aimed to explore a diverse range of media, with a focus on video, site specific installation, and a special attention towards the works of female artists. After ten years in its historical location, the gallery opened in a new space in October 2010, under the name kaufmann repetto, to mark the partnership between Francesca Kaufmann and Chiara Repetto. In its new location, the gallery has been able to further develop its exhibition programming through a project space dedicated predominantly to younger artists, as well as a courtyard for large scale outdoor installations, which run parallel to the gallery’s main exhibition schedule. In 2013, the gallery inaugurated a new location in Chelsea, New York, with a parallel program to the gallery’s main space in Milan. In 2019 the New York location moved to Tribeca, expanding to a 3,000 sq ft exhibition space. The inaugural exhibition at the gallery’s new space in Tribeca was a solo show by Lily van der Stokker. ...