Ymane Fakhir's project “The Lion's Share” combines sculptures, video, photography, and text, to narrates the story of a bereaved Muslim family and their share of the inheritance. An algebra lesson in which the Moroccan artist examines the place of women in the Muslim family—and beyond.
The Lion's Share is one of the first stories of Muslim inheritance to be so true and illustrated. This aesthetic narration told by Ymane Fakhir works as a projection in which each of us is given the opportunity of imagining his or her own distribution. Discarding any notion of melancholy, The Lion's Share should not be understood in the meaning of cultural transmission. The artist already addressed this question in her previous works—The Trousseau photographs between 2005 and 2008 and the Handmade videos in 2011-2012. Such inheritance or legacy is not what is at stake here. The Lion's Share is a cake that has to be cut in pieces before any tasting and tearing apart can start. It is a drama which can be only fathomed through rumours. It is an algebra lesson during which the infamous rule “one part for a woman equals two parts for a man” resonates ad in nitum, taking the shape of a mathematical account between eight characters (husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter) considered as pure mathematical objects. And so the story begins with the deaths of Hussain, Leila, Abdelkader, Lalla Zhor, Khalil and Si'Mohammed.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Kulte Gallery, Rabat, from April 15 to July 1st, 2017.
Photography and video hold an essential place in the work of Ymane Fakhir (born 1969, Casablanca, lives and works in Marseille). She first studied at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca where she was born. When she moved to France, she attended the School of Fine Arts in Aix-en-Provence before joining the National School of Photography in Arles through an exchangeprogram. Today, living in Marseille, she enriches her work with numerous trips from France to Morocco, creating a dialectical, physical and intellectual interaction, between her cultural heritage and her personal experiences.
