AU COMMENCEMENT ÉTAIT L’ALIF
"IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE ALIF"
An exhibition by Salim Le Kouaghet at the Grande Mosquée de Paris
For the first time, the Grande Mosquée de Paris is opening its doors to contemporary art. Salim Le Kouaghet, a painter trained in Constantine, Algiers, Metz, Paris and at the University of Paris VIII, has created an original and deeply moving body of work. In both the Andalusian garden and the Salle Émir Abdelkader, he places Wast-ed-Dar "the centre of the house" at the heart of a subtle dialogue between sacred space, intimate memory and the language of art.
Eight vertical Alifs punctuate the garden. They are not simple structures, but symbolic figures: the first letters, invisible pillars of an inner space, evocative of the original breath and the number eight, the sign of infinity. These Alifs, standing in the light, are the guardians of a silence charged with presence.
For over forty years, Salim Le Kouaghet has been exploring, through his painting, the signs of a world in tension: fragmented writing and the Tifinagh alphabet, canvases torn, sewn and nailed. Her approach draws on both the visual traditions of the Maghreb and gestural abstraction. Her work is permeated by night, light and exile - but always in search of balance and inner verticality.
Wast-ed-Dar is not a set. It's a procession. An architecture of signs, a sensory journey where forms rise like thresholds between collective memory and interiority. In this place of prayer, the works don't impose themselves: they whisper. They establish a rhythm. The rhythm of a language rediscovered, a breath recomposed.
By bringing together painting, installation and spirituality, the exhibition challenges the categories of profane and sacred, abstraction and anchoring, history and myth. It affirms a poetics of simplicity and contemplation. It's an invitation to look differently, to listen to the invisible, to recognise in the Alif not just a letter, but a posture: that of standing upright, in the din of the world, carried by the light.