Fatine-Violette Sabiri at Pangée, Montreal

Artist: Fatine-Violette Sabiri

Exhibition title: Khey

Venue: Pangée, Montreal, Canada

Date: September 12 – November 2, 2024

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Pangée, Montreal

I will come back sometimes to look at the door; I will not knock, I will not ring. Behind this locked door is a story: a brotherhood that transcends latitude and longitude alike. Upon touching the walls, you can feel the bass’ rhythm reverberating through. Ounga, ounga, climb the stairs like a tiger. Facing the door, you might lean so far into the peephole that you get stuck. Through the haze, you’ll be able to make out the edges of a cockpit in which silence disperses cries of sadness, where a father attempts to muffle his grief behind humour that fades upon its contact with the heavy air in which two siblings travel, finally finding themselves reunited after almost a decade spent thousands of miles apart. They welcome a new day together. A day when the word “home” refers neither to Casablanca nor Montreal, but rather to a face, the only one that truly unders-tands. This face is looking straight ahead, ready to witness a day-to-day that will never look the same again. The pilot remains silent. The father clumsily tries to cope with the moment’s gravity. There is nothing left to do but to look at the horizon and map out a reality that will forever remain liminal.

Back to the vibrations, to the bass — we take a detour through music in order to get into the semantics of silence and its resonance. In 2019, the Andrieu brothers, better known as French rap duo PNL, release their third album Deux frères. It is a melancholic ode to their brotherhood, the only light able to shine through the clouds as daylight and darkness blend together. Both armed with their arrogance and exaggerated machismo, the brothers dive in and explore the most vulnerable depths of their own life story and of their mixed Corsican and Algerian identity. The music that plays on the other side of the wall is no coincidence; it is the very melody that serves to weave this narrative together.

What can we make of the distances that form us, that split us into our different commu-nities, between our origins and our present selves, between brother and sister, between our feminine identities and the dominating masculine culture? Where must we look, where must we listen to take full measure of what we are?

The plane prepares to engrave its story on a perpetually shifting ground. The brother’s face is turned toward the future like a sole reference point in incertitude. Altitude is lost. Images appear in sequence as they echo against the aluminum surface of the cabin, mixed up. The stairs leading to the cockpit. A child under water. An adult embracing his dog. A song that unexpectedly speaks to us. A story, always a story. Silence. Love that persists.

Everything I take, I give it to you, sort of like my life Only you know what I’ve gone through Only I know what you’ve gone through

Tout ce que je prends, j’te le donne, un peu comme ma vie

Y’a que toi qui sais ce que je vis

Que moi qui sais ce que tu vis

PNL

Text by Jean-Guy Forget