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Resine and marble bust
73h x 52w x 28d cm
The Smiling Hannibal looks at us. He welcomes the visitor in a totally different shade from the one which marked him during all the European history (such shade that comes from the original sculpture discovered in Capua and allocated to the Carthaginian strategos and political leader).
Adding a sarcastic smile on Hannibal lips Nidhal Chamekh has been capable to transform the distance that has always put the viewer far from the Roman Empire’s enemy. Thereby Nidhal is questioning all the distances that Europe, Rome heir, places nowadays before the Others: among them there are north-African migrants, Hannibal’ sons. Irony destabilizes the stereotyped relationship, which a certain tradition has tried to impose through ages. It is placed on the edge, between the Outside – the Mediterranean Sea - and the Inside - an anonymous immigration office. Smile placed on an always forbidden and always broken boundary that will follow the visitor in a despotic way and will force him to move his traces and memories.
Métempsychoses, Arafat Sadallah
Burn, Primo Marella gallery, Milan, 2016