Artist's Statement-Fair Trade Free Market
From Souq el Ahad in Beirut, Lebanon a story unravels of two women on the hunt for treasure. Passing stalls of dried fruits, construction tools, Indian fabrics and plastic flowers, the smell of fried food and fresh orange juice waft through mixing with cheap perfume and cars from the highway overhead. Music from Oum Kulthoum to Nancy bounced at high volume from stall to stall. Their quest for treasure with a tale had begun.
An ancient plate from Egypt, a magic box from Greece, a mother's ring from Yemen, gold shoes from China, a necklace from a refugee camp...Each object packed its story, eagerly traveling over the sea to Porta Pilazzo Market in Torino, Italy.
There they found a world both familiar and different than the one they had left behind a few days earlier. The scent of felafel replaced by fresh fish and strawberries, the highway replaced by a tram. Lebanese was replaced by a mixture of Moroccan, Italian, English, Chinese and Romanian. The sound of the loudspeaker blaring prices in Lira were replaced by the unfamiliar sound of a man repeating "Libero Mercato Equo Sociale. Scambio un oggetto con una storia"
With that, the objects realized their lives were about to change forever...
-a project by Sarah Farahat and Marta Bogdańska with the support of curator Seçil Yaylali and art collective 6SecondsTO. (2012- )
An ancient plate from Egypt, a magic box from Greece, a mother's ring from Yemen, gold shoes from China, a necklace from a refugee camp...Each object packed its story, eagerly traveling over the sea to Porta Pilazzo Market in Torino, Italy.
There they found a world both familiar and different than the one they had left behind a few days earlier. The scent of felafel replaced by fresh fish and strawberries, the highway replaced by a tram. Lebanese was replaced by a mixture of Moroccan, Italian, English, Chinese and Romanian. The sound of the loudspeaker blaring prices in Lira were replaced by the unfamiliar sound of a man repeating "Libero Mercato Equo Sociale. Scambio un oggetto con una storia"
With that, the objects realized their lives were about to change forever...
-a project by Sarah Farahat and Marta Bogdańska with the support of curator Seçil Yaylali and art collective 6SecondsTO. (2012- )
