PARIS.- “Souterrain”, Kazma’s solo show at the Jeu de Paume, sets out to reveal the evolution of Kazma’s work over the past ten years by including an important number of his recent works, in particular two works made specifically for this exhibition. Around twenty video works and one photographic publication – an artist’s book – are on show. The video works are immersing the viewer into the space and confronting him with the rhythm and the colour of the single or multiple-channel projections. Ali Kazma has made over sixty videos since he started working with this medium. His body of work, made up of many individual films, also embraces two major series entitled “Obstructions” (2005–ongoing) and “Resistance” (2012–on-going). Up until now, the “Obstructions” series has been composed of eighteen videos of variable duration (between five and seventeen minutes):

“The majority of works in the ‘Obstructions’ series deals with human beings’ efforts to secure the continuity, comfort, measurement, control, maintenance and healing of the body. The field of performance, or the final product of such activities could be a material object that supports or supplements the body, while at other times the body is revealed in performance, or becomes the site of performance itself. The title of this series refers to the fundamental scientific truth that everything must eventually disintegrate and perish. Here, ‘obstructions’ points to the sum of human activities oriented towards fighting this inevitable process of annihilation – and ultimately, death – in order to slow down, delay or temporarily ignore this process”.*

With the “Resistance” series, the artist focuses on the human body in the contemporary context. Varying between three and eight minutes long, the works are a little shorter than those in the “Obstructions” series. The video installation he made for the Turkish Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) included the simultaneous projection of thirteen works from this series, stressing the use of the space as one of the essential elements of the work:

“Resistance’ has evolved out of the ‘Obstructions’ series. In this project developed for the Pavilion of Turkey at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), Kazma explores the process that both construct and control the body; the struggle to crack the social, cultural, physical and genetic codes of the human body in order to render it perfect; as well as the processes during which the body becomes, or is transformed into a conveyor of new symbols and meanings”. --Emre Baykal, “Tracing Time“, in Ali Kazma: Timemaker, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, ARTER, 2015

From Safe (2015, the global seed vault, containing the world’s largest collection of crop diversity, situated on one of the islands of the Svalbard Archipelago, north of Norway, designed to preserve seeds from extinction) to Mine (2017, a deserted nitrate mine in the Atacama Desert, Chile), from Taxidermist (2010, a video showing detailed shots of the process of cleaning, preserving and filling dead animal skins) to Tattoo (2013, showing intricate compositions of a young man being tattooed all over his body), from Brain Surgeon (2006, an operation on the brain of a patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease) to Anatomy (2013, an anatomy lesson on a human corpse for a group of young students), Ali Kazma creates a "cartography" in motion of the rhythms that punctuate the experience of human activity.

The artist’s interest in particular places as testimonies of human history is reflected in works like Absence (2011) and Safe (2015), as well as the two latest works he produced for this exhibition. Entitled Mine and North, they both show very impressive, hostile places, linked to complex political situations, which were exploited by man and then abandoned. Mine was shot in an old nitrate mine in Chacabuco, a small abandoned mining town situated in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The mine closed down in the late 1930s and became a concentration camp for the Pinochet regime in the early 1970s. Workers, lawyers, artists and writers were imprisoned there. The video depicts this abandoned town. North is a video shot at the Pyramiden Coal Mine situated in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, an archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Among other things, this abandoned mine embodies the region’s complex political history, marked by Soviet culture for over fifty years (between 1936 and 1991).

Ali Kazma chooses his subjects for their historical, social, aesthetic and political potential. He produces works that are short and concise, with no contrivances. The actions and places that Ali Kazma chooses to work on are transmitted, through the medium of video, in real time to the spectator. The subject matter is communicated in a very direct way. With their intense rhythm and detail, videos draw the viewer in. Some are highly informative, dealing with specific subjects – like a medical dissection, an archaeological dig or a NATO base that has been transformed into a military museum – and others can be considered as reference documents referring to the context of history, stressing the necessity to reveal change in society. However, in some works, the scenes may be framed and edited in order to produce images that are almost abstract (for example Tea Time, 2017) where the representation of form may be read on a metaphorical level.