Talwin (meaning change in arabic) is the title chosen for Maïmouna Gerresi’s solo exhibition at Matèria. In Sufi culture, the term represents the final stages of a being’s spiritual enlightenment and path towards knowledge. The exhibition showcases a selection of unseen photographic works, the video Akfa 0, a sculpture titled Adama and Students and Teacher, a photographic polyptych produced in 2012.

The two gallery rooms illustrate the artist’s multifaceted practice, presenting a collection of works developed upon the cornerstone of Guerresi’s research: an alchemy of metaphysical suspension, transformation, mysticism and mimesis.

Guerresi’s large-scale subjects are placed in dialogue with discarded and subsequently recuperated bellic objects. Tanks, shells and wartime relics shed their primary connotations and emerge as innocuous, ordinary and decorative; a form of contemporary ready-made interlaced with past and ongoing socio-political issues.

This dichotomy created between tension and serenity underlines the essence of the term Talwin: the Heraclitian burgeoning of a being, where all things are subject to time and transformation.