Philippe Jacq

In the hot Streets of Oran, in Algeria, we played football with friends using a rubber ring. The ball was made from washers cut out of the inner tube of a bicycle. We Drew our playground on the tarmac with chalk to mark a territory. Playing is what I still do in my studio today. When travelling, I always collect lots of pieces of fabric. My studio is filled with carpets from Tinariwen ( where nomadic Tuaregs live), but also flocked or silkscreened colourful t-shirts and tapestries found on the pavements near my home…

I like losing myself in major European capitals, with high immigrant populations, from Paris’Chinatown to London’s East End or Kreutzberg in Berlin. There are so many places that inspire me. Our societies are multi-ethnic, multi-faith and my paintings are expression of this. I use codes, and universal symbols, I mix them together, without censorship, without worrying about protagonism and communitarianism. Above all my universe is syncretic. Like a spider, I patiently weave a complex network of forms and words, delimiting pictoral zones, spaces, tracing rhizomes between East and West, Europe and Africa, where I was born. The wire seals the Memory and tightens the arc.

Philippe Jacq