Marhaba to the future, meeting with Mounir Ayache

On this cold and sunny afternoon, Mounir Ayache welcomes us in his studio, in the heart of Paris’ 14th arrondissement. Inside, what seems like odds and ends is actually organized, a testament to the artist’s procrastination. In between a digital milling machine and a coffee percolator from another century, we see a flight simulator, made from aluminium and brass and covered in arabesques, that was shown at the Paname Biennale of 2018. A space at once chaotic and familiar that’s closer to an engineer’s lab than to a contemporary artist’s studio. This ambiguity is precisely what makes his work so curiously interesting.

Mounir Ayache grew up in Bordeaux with the dream of, one day, becoming an airplane pilot. A whim inextricably linked to his father, a computer engineer. Fascinated by technology and science-fiction, he decides, after a year of studying engineering, to go to Paris’s Beaux-Arts. There, he develops a hybrid approach, mixing science-fiction, Arab futurism and engineering. We meet him to talk about his work after he’s been chosen to show a new piece at the Manifesta 13 Biennale, that takes place in Marseille from the end of August until November. 

Mounir Ayache’s work is attractive, first and foremost, because of his novel approach in talking about the Arab world. With methods specific to science-fiction, he creates an Arab futurism that is rooted in his family history. “The Arab world is at a crossroads today, and has been since decolonization. It has to choose which past it wants to recognize. How do we go back to these glorious decades full of Art and philosophy while, in some political fields, a form of religious extremism is on the rise? It’s interesting to contemplate the possibilities”.

While this subject is now at the heart of his work, it was not so obvious when he started. “The desire appeared slowly, as I rediscovered the history of my father, who comes from Fez, and as I witnessed the growing tensions around Islam in France”. In his first years at the Beaux-Arts, he deliberately didn’t broach the subject. “But after the terrorist attacks of November 13th, young people that were the same age as me, with names and surnames that sounded like mine, were going to war. I wanted to speak up”.

In order to widen his scope, structure his thoughts and to give himself more legitimacy, Mounir Ayache studied anthropology, sociology, and he also attended conferences at the Institut du Monde Arabe. A way for him to question certain issues, like moral values and the question of memory. “You have to be careful not to impose a vision embedded in European values. For example, feminism in Morocco can’t be conceived the same way as it is in Europe”.

His more recent work, Khadija, is currently being shown at Marseille’s Manifesta 13 Biennale. A metaphoric and multiform installation, made from video, performance art and mechanical structures. In it, a futuristic heroine has to free herself from a superior entity. The piece deals with moral and institutional oppression without restricting the public’s imagination or judgement.

Khadija, like Mounir Ayache’s past work, is built on video, programming and methods usually used for science-fiction. He has been passionate about these imaginary worlds since childhood, and has made them an anchor point in his artistic practice. Science-fiction seems to be the ideal interactive language to illustrate what he has to say. The genre rethinks our social and political world, from Frank Herbert foundational novel Dune in 1965, made into a movie by David Lynch, to Star Trek and more recently Star Wars. “There were, ever since the 1980s, a lot of non-sexualized heroines that were, for example, starship captains. It was ultimately very avant-garde. I’m thinking particularly of something like Star Trek Voyager!”.

Mounir Ayache sees science-fiction as a way to invent “a possible future on which I add a technical consistency”. Talking about the Arab world with this perspective is doubly advantageous: it allows one to take a step back, and plays with the dichotomy, central to science-fiction, between good and evil. “I often have fun with these codes by adding other dimensions”, he says.

Mounir Ayache had to think about this technological work as an entrepreneur would. ”I wanted to think long-term, not just produce a quick installation with easy pieces in order to do an exhibit, like young artists are often pressured into doing”. The artist needed more than a year to create the giant milling machine that allowed him to cut up and engrave the metallic elements used in his pieces, and even his robots. “It was sort of an investment for the future”, he says.

Teachers and colleagues at the Beaux-Arts did not, however, always agree with this original practice: “I was considered, more often than not, a technician and not an artist, also because I worked on the side to earn a living... and it was in fashion!”.

In spite of the artistic trends that don’t spare contemporary art, Mounir Ayache’s artist-engineer approach, that takes his time understanding the subtleties of his art and technique, is precisely what makes his pieces enduring.

“The access that we have to technologies, images or tutorials on the Internet, gives the artists of the year 2020 new opportunities and substantial ways to search that deeply transform Art. A lot of them reject it, wrapping themselves in the clothes of the bohemian artist. I decided to do the opposite.” By favouring a long-term timeline, and with his complex and unusual skills, Mounir Ayache seems to be deeply reweaving what an artist and a craftsman have in common.

His work, while still young, deals with Arab futurism indirectly and discreetly. “I did not want my approach to be too head-on, on the contrary. The idea was to stay humble, to observe without judgement and to open possibilities”. This distinctive discretion is allowed, as we have seen, by the use of science-fiction. To consider the future of such rich and complex cultures and countries is an infinitely difficult task. The artist can only add his objective and cautious eye.