Carnet de Visage" exhibition at the Dames Blanches cloister
After an exhibition in Paris at Chamberlan and at the printemps Fleuriau in 2021, Jika exhibited at the Cloître des Dames Blanches from 22 June to 22 September 2022 with an installation of 33 large formats in partnership with the Mairie de La Rochelle.
We would like to extend our warmest thanks to Catherine Benguigui, deputy mayor of La Rochelle, Anna Maria Spano, Géraldine Gillardeau, head of the town's cultural affairs department, and Doria Ardiet, cultural mediator, who have made this magnificent exhibition possible at the Cloître des Dames Blanches.
Jeremy Kapone was present at the opening of his exhibition Carnet de Visage, and was able to meet his public and fans of contemporary art.
20,000 visitors were able to discover the portraits in "Carnet de Visage" volume 1 over the 5 months of the exhibition and some of the portraits in the next volume 2, which will be released in November 2023. The portraits, made in Indian ink at the moment of the meeting, were printed on 145cm x 200cm Dibond. Visitors were able to discover the portrait of Tamia, for example, the first portrait of an unknown person deep in the Amazon that Jika made in 2012. They also discovered the portraits of Isabelle de Borchgrave, the great Belgian artist they met in her studio in Brussels, Sylvana Lorenz, Pierre Cardin's muse, Dilnur Reyhan, the spokesperson for the Uighurs, a Tuareg king from the Niger desert, a German blacksmith living in Corsica, and Alan Chin, a ceramist with whom Jika was able to take up an artist residency in Los Angeles?Through their art of living, they all remind us of our humanity, whether as artists or craftsmen, and all these portraits are the result of encounters made during the artist's travels...
The Cloitre des Dames Blanches is a historic site, but it's also a contemporary art gallery open to the public. It also attracts a very young audience, as many secondary school students come here for lunch, or to revise for their A-levels, while discovering new exhibitions! "As an exhibition curator, it was particularly important to me, being from La Rochelle myself, to install the exhibition by the artist Jeremy Kapone here, in order to help young people discover the human and artistic dimension of the portrait taken in the moment of the encounter, in a world where selfies and social networks are instantaneous...
Taking the time to meet, talk and portray someone is part of a deeper, more human process of connecting with others...".
Delphine Garnier
