‘An artist and a work of art are witnesses to their time and can strike hard, but without hatred, like a butcher, like Goya was. Another round of hatred is not necessary. We don’t have to hate. A work of art is not at all changed or hateful, luckily.’
Executed in 2008, Fatalité exemplifies Adel Abdessemed’s commitment to provocation without criticism. Across his expansive oeuvre, Abdessemed positions his works as commentary on social, political and religious taboos, mass media, violence and spectatorship. Consisting of seven hand-blown glass microphones, Fatalité co-opts the microphone, an item with an easily identifiable function – to be spoken into and to amplify communication between people – into something still recognisable yet totally ineffective. In an interview Abdessemed described himself "like a bow that shoots some kind of arrow, but I know where I’m aiming… And so I connect people, feelings and things" (Adel Abdessemed cited in: Daniel Rachwerger, ‘Close to the Sun’, Haaretz, April 2011, online). Indeed, Fatalité typifies this concept, connecting Abdessemed’s ideological commentary with a physical object.
Abdessemed’s choice of medium is crucial in conveying the fragility and inaccessibility of communication, instead highlighting the vulnerability and fallacy of open and honest communication. The glass microphones convey their metaphorical purpose through what they are missing, rather than what they offer: their transparency and fragility mirror the broken promises and empty words spoken by those in power. Choosing the right material is an integral part of Abdessemed’s working process, the artist comments, "finding the right substance – whether bones, salt or gold – for each piece is part of my research and becomes integral to the aesthetic of the final product" (Adel Abdessemed cited in: Mara Hoberman, ‘The Artist Provocateur: Adel Abdessemed’, Canvas, November-December 2014, p. 170, online).
Abdessemed left his home city of Constantine, Algeria, in 1994, after living through the civil war a decade earlier. During his university years in Algeria, he witnessed unspeakable violence throughout the war, including the murder of the director of his university. Speaking about his experiences with violence and conflict, the artist stated "without struggle, there would be very little art, very little invention" (Adel Abdessemend cited in: Farah Nayeri, ‘Adel Abdessemed: Tackling Themes of Everyday Cruelty and Extremism’, The New York Times, October 2015, online). Abdessemed often avoids being too literal in the issues he’s chosen to shine a spotlight on, instead opting to explore the tension between the state of unrest and the eruption of violence and war. In doing so, Abdessemed declines to create a structural narrative through his artistic production, instead calling every piece he creates an ‘act’ – each a fragment of time that are separate pieces of a unified whole.