In Arabic, Albaream (البرعم) means bud.
Bourgeon (bud in French), is my mother’s last name. For two years, I didn’t hear from her after she underwent compulsory hospitalisation, in the spring of 2021. It was after the covid pandemic, and life was burgeoning again, the first buds were appearing.
Last year, I wanted to go back to something I experienced as a child, to delve into my memories. I painted coloured landscapes reminiscent of Le Havre, the industrial port city where I grew up. One can see the sea, and colour blocks that serve as metaphors of shipping containers. Le Havre was fully destroyed during World War II, and reconstructed in concrete following the principles of brutalist architecture. To me, it’s always felt cold, grey, and desolated. In the end, in this city, the only touches of colour come from the outside, from those container ships that arrive from distant shores to come dock in this grey landscape.
I think that this experience of a port city, of greyness, and of colours always originating in the outer world, in far-away cities, has profoundly shaped my imagination and my eagerness to travel. Perhaps it’s also why I have always enjoyed inventing distant origins for myself, to draw imaginary family trees that take their roots in Iran, Lebanon, Tunisia… Albaream.
This series is composed of a continuum of weaves that form a horizontal landscape.
« Le Havre, an industrial city in the north of France known for its commercial port, shaped Marie Hazard’s sense that no place is really home. Hazard’s experience in a society with a dying middle class, polarized between a shipping elite and port workers, instilled in her a feeling of not belonging to any community or place. The constant coming and going of cargo ships with unknown origins and destinations awakened in Hazard a nomadic curiosity that manifests itself across the artist’s oeuvre. » Cy Schnabel, in Marie Hazard, Albaream, Zolo Press, Mexico City, 2023.
Exhibition views from:
Albaream, May 2023
The Journal gallery, New York City
