Pace Welcomes Latifa Echakhch

Marc Glimcher, CEO and President of Pace Gallery, announced today that the gallery will begin representing Latifa Echakhch in collaboration with her existing galleries, Kamel Mennour, Kaufmann Repetto, and Dvir Gallery.

Echakhch, whose internationally celebrated practice spans painting, sculpture, and installation, explores the political valences of a diverse range of materials in her work. Echakhch’s abstractions and lyrical forms meditate on personal and societal conflicts, memory, and migration, among other subjects. Describing her practice as a synthesis of “politics and poetry,” Echakhch employs methods of erasure and destruction to transform everyday objects into culturally loaded signifiers of identity, history, and mythology.

Large-scale interventions have become a renowned element of Echakhch’s multi-faceted practice. For her widely exhibited 2007 installation A chaque stencil une révolution (For each stencil a revolution), the artist treated carbon paper with a chemical solvent to make the material bleed a vibrant azure hue reminiscent of International Klein Blue. That work takes its title from a quote by the late Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat. It also references the use of carbon paper and stencil machines for printed materials made and distributed by protest groups in the 1960s. Other notable installations include a 2014 presentation in the Centre Pompidou’s Espace 315—mounted after the artist was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2013—and a 2019 exhibition at the Fondazione Memmo, Rome.

In 2022, Echakhch will represent Switzerland at the 59th Venice Biennale and present her first solo exhibition with Pace at the gallery’s new London space on Hanover Square. Opening in March 2022, the artist’s exhibition in London will serve as a precursor to her presentation in the Venice Biennale. With the inauguration of its new London gallery in fall 2021, Pace will continue to expand its contemporary program in Europe by way of landmark exhibitions and regularly held Pace Live events. Pace looks forward to supporting Echakhch in the development of future exhibitions, publishing projects, and other programming in collaboration with her other galleries.

Marc Glimcher says:

“Latifa is an artist who mines the complexities of political and cultural histories to make work that speaks to contemporary times. Her singular voice is vital in today’s world and complements our growing program of contemporary artists who are examining and changing society through their art-making. We look forward to Latifa’s first exhibition at Pace in our new Hanover Square gallery in London, just ahead of her project for the Swiss pavilion in Venice. We are delighted to collaborate with her other galleries to create a support system for Latifa as her career continues to reach new heights.”

Latifa Echakhch says:

“I am very happy to join Marc Glimcher and Pace’s incredible team. The manner in which the gallery is organized—and the way it commits to supporting artists’ careers with depth, dedication, and long-term care—is something that resonated with me. A sincere attachment to artists as human beings and real support of their sensitivities and practices are essential values to me. More than ever, we need a real belief in and a love of art.”

Echakhch has figured in group shows at institutions including the Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing; MoMA PS1, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore; and the Kunsthalle Basel. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; MACBA – Museu d’Art Contemporain, Barcelona, Spain; the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and other international museums and foundations.

The artist has also exhibited major installations at the Power Plant, Toronto, where her work Cross Fade featured a crumbling fresco of clouds, and the 2017 Istanbul Biennial, which showcased her fragmented fresco Crowd Fade. In 2020, the artist presented a solo exhibition titled The Sun and the Set at BPS22, Charleroi.

Learn more about Latifa Echakhch.