From the simple desire to produce a hug, the artist triggers a transmission device. A small child, full of emotion, looks out of his window and tinkers with a machine to talk to the stars; it is this fragile, tenacious energy that runs through the work, an affective, sidereal system of communication. She uses an archaic technology - the skin of a drum vibrating at 55Hz - and the idea of a contemporary technology: the transmission of messages in space. Morse code becomes breath, call, beat. Inspired by traditional Lebanese drummers, Marconi's experiments in Salvan and Leukerbad's listening antennas, the work hijacks the tools of control to write love letters to the stars. An eight-pointed star appears as a guide. The work acts as a deployed sensory organ. It listens, it pulses, it transmits what language can no longer say.
Born in 1997
Based in Basel
Alex Ghandour's work is a call to poetic action and a form of sensitive resistance, using art to create affect-laden dialogues and circulate forms of generosity, in a world marked by violence and division.
Personal and political issues are intertwined, linked to diasporic heritages and the resonances of a changing world.
Nurtured by a background in both the visual arts and cooking, her practice explores the transformation of materials and the body through ritualized gestures.
It opens up sensitive spaces, traversed by tensions, attachments and frictional memories, questioning cultural identities and relational dynamics.