"Le bruit des bonbons – The Astounding Eyes of Syria" addresses the power of language of confectionery and everyday objects.
The work explores the condensations of history, the resistance of our past legacies. If candy is a universal transmitter that humanizes relationships between individuals, it is here the driving object that has the power to bring people together, to transmit as well as to remember. It is through Syrian confectionery that the installation evokes and shares memories that survive time and the horror of war. She weaves temporalities that are both plausible and real against a backdrop of shared traditions. Many Syrians find themselves today around their living heritage whose collective and individual memories involve the survival of an intangible that cannot be folded, reduced or forgotten. Louloupti is a real little candy that reminds us of the Abaib Ghouwar, small Syrian sugar clogs, the Al-Hamidiyah souk and the Booza which are today more than ever in the memory of Syrians in Jordan, in France, in Canada, Italy... These candies, image objects and links, repair our vision and awaken our ability to see and mobilize. Imagined by Benjamin Loyauté, these narrative sweets are transmitting agents, actants. For several centuries, Arab peoples introduced sugar into the pharmacopoeia. In the 16th century, sugar was sold by apothecaries. The candy had its virtues that history has not since taken up. Discovered in Syria by Max Mallowan in 1937, the eyed idol is a sculpture which still intrigues and whose function has never really been clarified.The Louloupti drawn from this archeology is as speculative as it is tangible. Made of meringue and Damascus rose, it would also have the function of extending time and memories as well as preserving the future... By collecting the words, stories and “sweet memories” of his Syrian friends on cards postal, the artist and designer participates in the protection of a culture whose trace forms an armor. The installation is a “fictio-functional” experience, where the word-objects have a perlocutionary force.
Language: French
Release date: 2016
Pages: 399
