ET TOUT DEVIENT COULEUR - LES NATURES MORTES DE BAYA MAHIEDDINE

Baya (1931–1998) transforms the still life into a virtuosity of living natures, developing an autonomous pictorial language in which elements are never isolated, but inscribed within a shared relational field. Flowers, birds, fruits, and musical instruments coexist in compositions shaped by colour and form, free from hierarchy and illusionistic perspective.

Set apart from the European still-life tradition, codified from the seventeenth century around static objects and symbolic meanings tied to vanity and the passage of time, Baya’s work unfolds according to a logic of circulation. Motifs do not seek to represent, but to coexist. Musical instruments, fauna, and flora form an organic whole, without centre or periphery, where the image is held in a state of tension and equilibrium.

Produced between 1946 and 1998, these works testify to a singular plastic freedom. Repetition of form, chromatic variation, and the instability of planes structure the compositions. Colour operates as an autonomous, non-descriptive principle, emerging from an Algerian imagination, memory, and modernity of its own.

Baya’s visual vocabulary is profoundly musical. Instruments—flutes, drums, lutes—do not assert themselves as discrete objects, but as presences woven into the visual fabric, introducing an internal rhythm and a poetics of movement that animate the pictorial surface. Her work suggests neither disappearance nor finitude, but a continuous presence, liberated from the memento mori that long structured the genre. A spiritual dimension emerges, without emphasis or overt symbolism.

At the Grande Mosquée de Paris, the exhibition adopts a non-chronological display conceived in dialogue with the site’s architectural heritage. Mouldings, zelliges, and carved woodwork extend the vitality of the compositions and intensify their perception.

Within this space of resonance between artwork and architecture, until all is color.

Curator: Yasmine Azzi-Kohlhepp