Born in 1997 in Paris, France. Based in Paris, France.
Chadine Amghar describes herself as a “spectator” of the street. She works with everyday objects, those that populate and sometimes invade our cities and homes: leftovers, discards, and cast-offs that pile up in corners, whose origins we still vaguely recall but whose proper place we almost never remember. Through misuse and by combining forms and ideas, she pushes these objects to their limits, to the edge of their reality, until the absurdity of their overabundance bursts forth. By displacing them, by stripping them of their function, she also tells a story of migrations, of crossings, of cultures that intermingle, intersect, and sometimes collide.
Her work proceeds by contamination and short circuits: a bazaar trinket gains nobility, a relic springs from a Cristaline bottle, a play on words derails meaning. She blurs the lines and invents new ones, where symbols of power crumble, waver, and border on the ridiculous. Conversely, figures, gestures, and objects that are ordinarily scorned take on a new significance and reveal their revolutionary potential: household utensils and electric scooters stand as barricades; cocktail stirrers keep watch alongside soggy baguettes; Tati bags harden into cinder blocks, ready to obstruct and blow everything up.
Chadine Amghar seems to be on a mission: to emancipate these things from their sad condition as commodities and enlist them in a veritable liberation front for everyday objects. More than a “spectator” of the street, she should therefore be seen – to borrow the title of one of her installations – as an “agitator” of our living spaces.