Hakima El Djoudi "The World is yours"

About

A graduate of the fine art schools of Angoulême and Grenoble, Hakima El Djoudi (b. 1977, lives and works in Paris) conducts a multi-faceted research while establishing bridges between film, video and installation. As a real film buff, she works with Hollywood Film Noir movies from the 1930-1940s from which she isolates the cabarets’ neon signs. The artist searches into those cult crime films images of flashing signs announcing words such as “Paradise” or “The World is yours,” referring to the climax of a now gone leisure society haunted by mythical gangsters figures. Through a sharp editing, she gives new life to such den of vice and gambler rooms, in order to project them in the illusionist way within night-time urban public space.

In Sainte-Colombe and Vienne, Hakima El Djoudi proposes to screen a set of illuminated signs on the facades of some buildings. At nightfall, the Pavilion of tourism, the Verrière des cordeliers (Sainte-Colombe), the Teviloj plant (Valley of Gere), the Roman Temple of Augustus & Livie (old centre) come alive in a shifted way, offering a new vision of these buildings and recalling the sleepless nights of villains and other gangsters.

Visible from the public space, the projections are in free access.