With summer fast approaching, TOPO announces a new body of work by artist Leila Zelli for this third cycle of programming on the theme of Frontiers, “Geopolitics, Variable Spaces.”

In this video proposal adapted for the web, the artist strings together excerpts from major media reports filmed in conflict zones in Syria from 2011 to the present day.

Having been born during the Iran-Iraq war, Leila Zelli's aim is to show the paradox of life in war-torn countries, with those little interstices of life that demonstrate the immense sadness and small moments of joy, the hope despite everything to underline the will to live and survive. Everyone has the right to these little moments of happiness, like those shouts of joy in a swimming pool, even in a hole dug by a bomb and filled with water...

The paradoxical boundary of each excerpt, whether it be the infinite flickering of a neon light, the hope of electricity returning to a hospital, or the resilience of a flowering plant next to a ruined building, takes a tender look at complex situations experienced by someone else, from “elsewhere.” The artist thus seeks to provoke a moment of reflection on the lives of war survivors, who are no longer others from elsewhere, but our neighbors, here and now.

There is something unbelievable about war... its grandeur, its harshness, its destruction that pushes humanity to its limits... its extreme “humanity”... With extreme violence or extreme tenderness... The coexistence of these contrasts is incredible! Incredibly beautiful! Incredibly ugly! ... So incredible that once experienced, it will never be forgotten..."

– Leila Zelli

In an interview with literary theorist and author of the book Sidérer, considérer : migrants en FranceIn 2017, Marielle Macé invites us to become aware of how we view others, to stop being stunned by them, and to consider them as unique living beings, just like ourselves. Others and the realities of their lives can never be reduced to a framework, an image, or an explanation.

"It is this emotional, intellectual, or political journey within each of us that allows us to move from shock to consideration, that is, from an emotion where we are stunned by a situation of suffering, an exorbitant collective historical situation [...]. And moving from this emotion of shock to an emotion of consideration means becoming patient, stopping believing that we recognize situations of suffering or situations of historical relegation, and taking an interest in the lives that are lived, even if they are unliveable, but which are precisely lived day by day in everyday life. Perhaps that is the most difficult thing, to realize that an unliveable life is also made up of daily life, of psychological intimacy, of interiority. It is made up of emotion, boredom, dreams, attempts to risk a daily life, a new daily life, even in the worst situations that can befall it. So that's it, that transition from shock to consideration."

Some excerpts were presented for the first time at the exhibition. Terrain de jeux (2019) by Leila Zelli at the Galerie de l’UQÀM in the form of an installation.

Meeting with the artist

On September 15, 2021, at 5 p.m., TOPO hosted a virtual meeting with artist Leila Zelli, creator of the web-based work Au jour le jour produced in spring 2021 by TOPO. In this video proposal adapted for the web, the artist strings together excerpts from major media reports filmed in conflict zones in Syria from 2011 to the present day.

During the virtual meeting on September 15, the artist will present some of his other projects underway for the summer of 2021, a very busy season for the recipient of the 2021 Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Award in Contemporary Art from UQAM, dedicated to emerging artists.

Born in Tehran, Iran, and based in Montreal, the artist's entire body of work explores our relationship with ideas of “others” and “elsewhere,” specifically within the geopolitical space often referred to by the controversial term “Middle East.”