Selected Bibliography

Art in America
“Rafik Greiss’s Photos Feel Like Flashes in a Dreamscape”
Interview by Lillian Davies
Illustration by Joe Mckendry
Interview Magazine “Rafik Greiss and Rose Salane on Nostalgia, Transcendence, and Revolution”In Conversation with Rose Salane
Photography by Zora Sicher
Émergent Magazine“Rafik Greiss”
Interview by Alan Gardner
Photography by Diana Bartlet
DAS Magazin: Kolumne Hans Ulrich Obrist“His works want to be touched, used and even destroyed“
Review by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Photography by Aurélien Mole
Mousse Magazine“He Touched Me, So I Live to Know: Rafik Greiss“
Review by Mitchell Anderson
Photography by Aurélien Mole

Plaster Magazine“Im a Hoarder at Heart”
Interview by Sarah Moroz
Photography by Finn Constantin

Numéro Art 13“Memoire affective”
Interview by Katja Horvat
Photography by Joshua Woods

Selected Conversations

Rafik Greiss in conversation with Rose Salane on Nostalgia, Transcendence, and Revolution, Interview Magazine, published Deecember 4, 2024

In The Longest Sleep, a new exhibition by Rafik Greiss now on view at Balice Hertling in Paris, the artist finds himself concerned with the life cycle of objects and rituals carried out across different global cultures. The work spans a number of mediums, including photo, sculpture and video, the latter working as the show’s anchor (its titular short film, shot during Greiss’ recent summer trip to his native Egypt, plays on a loop in the gallery’s basement). To make it, Greiss followed a friend on a whim to a Mawlid, a festival that takes place on the anniversary of a Sufi saint’s death. He found him surrounded by swarms of people undergoing hallucinatory, spiritual transformations, dancing, chanting and swirling on the streets of Cairo. “I’ve never seen this kind of transcendental experience without drugs and just through belief,” the Irish-born Egyptian artist explained. “I thought that was so contagious and it should be documented.” To mark the show’s opening, Greiss sat down with his friend and fellow artist Rose Salane to talk about performance across cultures, Monet’s Water Lilies, and the repurposing of found objects.

ROSE SALANE: Hi, how are you doing?

RAFIK GREISS: I’m good. Where are you these days?

SALANE: I’m in New York. Where are you?

GREISS: I’m in Paris.

SALANE: I remember the last time we saw each other was in Paris, in June. You and I were walking from seeing the Water Lilies.

GREISS: Oh, yeah. That was the last time we saw each other.

SALANE: I never saw that room that Monet specifically made the Water Lilies for, and that’s why I was so happy to go see that. I remember you and I were talking about his attempt to have no horizon and, through the paintings, suggest an environment that’s presented without interruption.

GREISS: I think that every artist attempts to create a space where they have a full, uninterrupted narrative over the viewer’s gaze. You also can’t really show the whole as the whole; you have to show it in fragments, and I think he does that really well.

SALANE: Yeah. It’s crazy to say but, conceptually, I see some similarities in your work to Monet’s in how and where the viewer is positioned to look. I remember you telling me about your exhibition and the way that it’s sort of delineated and then regrouped.

GREISS: Basically, I find an experience that affects me and then make work about that experience to recreate it for the viewer. So this show is comprised of many different kinds of work, from sculptures and photographs and video to the combination of all the mediums. There’s work I made in Georgia during my residency there last year, work I made this summer in Egypt, work I made in Paris.

SALANE: Just after I saw you in Paris, I actually went to Cairo and it significantly changed my life. It’s interesting also that you and I come from these extremely chaotic cities. Cairo chaos is much different from New York chaos. But I think it’s interesting because you’re making work in these places, and I’m interested in how you deal with, let’s say, the periphery and action and time within the periphery. I know that sounds a bit abstract, but in cities, I feel like there’s so much happening around us. And as artists, we keep pulling from these things that are in our surroundings and pushing it into the foreground.

GREISS: Totally. Having lived in both New York and Cairo, I think people perceive time really differently in both places, even though they’re both really chaotic. In New York, or in the West even, people perceive time in such a linear way, and they always ask themselves, “What’s next? How do I make a name for myself before I die?”

SALANE: Also, it’s all about the work day. It’s all about the nine-to-five.

GREISS: Yeah. Thinking of time in a cycle made sense in pre-modern societies, where there were much fewer innovations across generations and people lived really similarly to their grandparents and their great-grandparents. Meaning could therefore only be found in embracing the cycle of life and death and playing your part in that as best as you could. That’s why in Egypt, there’s kind of no traffic lights. The relationships between people are really raw and it’s a totally different way of being, I think.

SALANE: Yeah, I also know that the ritual and religious ceremonies are so important to the city’s infrastructural identity with the mosques and people pulling out the prayer rugs and having them very handy. I remember I was in the museum and there was a stack of prayer rugs in the corner, and people praying multiple times a day and having a small space to do that in.

GREISS: Yeah, totally.

SALANE: It’s that ritual and that recurrence of positioning your body into different movements. The identity of the city is very much shaped by that, and it’s in my periphery. I really want to hear about this aspect of your show where you’ve documented this ritual, religious ceremony in love.

GREISS: Well, I spent this summer there, and I actually didn’t really know what I wanted to do for this exhibition yet, so I followed a friend to this Mawlid, which is basically a festival commemorated on the anniversary of a Sufi saint’s death. It’s the day a saint was born for the heavens, they say. So the Sufi followers spend their time in big circles. They listen to songs and chants and whirl around while being wrapped in these spiritual revelations. I’ve never really seen anything like it, even though I grew up in Cairo. It was crazy to see the way people were dancing and whirling and their eyes were rolling behind their heads and spit was flying out their mouths, and they were really leaving their bodies in a way. I’ve never seen this kind of transcendental experience without drugs and just through belief, and I thought that was so contagious and it should be documented. So I spent the summer filming these events. It was really hard, actually, because they were not really allowing me to film any of this, so I had to get to know people and spend a lot of time with them before they got comfortable.

SALANE: That’s so interesting. How long does this ritual last for?

GREISS: It starts at around 10:00 P.M. and it lasts until 9:00 A.M. They go to bed as soon as the sun rises.

SALANE: The video itself is incredibly hypnotic. How did the people allow you to shoot them? They’re allowing you to see this complete vulnerability.

GREISS: Yes, which I think is a two-way street. To be able to film these things, I also have to show a side of myself that’s vulnerable, and that’s the only way you can really connect. It’s very hard because these people are going through a whole private, transcendental experience. In the end, all religions are about finding a sense of belonging in the world, and also about confronting the fear of death, and apparently it’s strong enough to make people reach that state of mind. And working throughout all these different mediums, I find that they’re an extension of each other. I think it’s important not to be really specific when starting a project and pigeonhole yourself in a formulaic way of thought. It’s important to stay as open as possible about your surroundings. I don’t really want to pursue a one-dimensional view in the work. I don’t really make photos thinking about a specific exhibition. When I construct an exhibition, I somehow always happen to find some photos that fit the concept. And I find photo to be a medium that plays with universality in how we collectively perceive our surroundings. Even though maybe we share these experiences together, I won’t necessarily see it in the same way.

SALANE: I wanted to ask about the photograph in the exhibition of a statue that you took in a museum. Can you tell me about that?

GREISS: Yeah. I was walking through the museum in Egypt and I took an image of a statue that was left in the courtyard, and people walk around it and have complete access to touch it. The statue has no head, it’s just a bust, and everything is covered in dust and it’s a total mess. There’s a different relationship that people have with preservation there, and I feel like there’s a certain warmth and rawness, which is a direct translation of the social conventions, but it’s still insane that the whole museum is covered in dust and it’s so unkempt with all these precious artifacts. So I titled the work I Hold My Breath.

SALANE: I love that title because you think of the dust within the museum, and even in Cairo itself. I remember being there in July, so it was very, very hot, and there was so much dust in the city and also coming in from the desert. It’s also an incredible way to connect it to the ritual within the Mawlid video, and just to—

GREISS: Time.

SALANE: Time, and the performative culture.

GREISS: Yeah, it’s really interesting to think of culture as performance, I think. When I moved to New York, I realized there were so many cultures in such a small amount of space.

SALANE: Why did you leave Cairo? And why did you decide to go back more often?

GREISS: Well, I left after the revolution started, which was over 10 years ago. I visit family every year, but I have never lived there or been there for longer than maybe a week at a time.

SALANE: And the revolution started in 2011, right?

GREISS: Yeah. I left in 2013, two years after it started, and my mom actually took me to Tahrir Square to many protests before I left.

SALANE: Oh, wow. And that’s across the street from the Egyptian Museum.

GREISS: Yeah. It was pretty wild to see at such a young age.

SALANE: I remember going to Tahrir Square and it was just incredible to see the amount of space. It’s a huge square, but I’m sure when there’s so many people occupying this space, it must look so different. What was it like seeing all of those demonstrations in Tahrir Square over the years?

GREISS: It was pretty crazy. There were five million people in the street, and it just felt really powerful to be involved in this monumental moment. I was 13, and it was the first time that I saw this collectivity of power being held by the people asking for a change from corruption.

SALANE: That’s such a powerful age to see that at. It’s interesting how this can redefine relationships to a home. I think a lot about what kind of nostalgia is held within countries that have been severely impacted through war or dictatorships. There is this book that I love, actually, called The Future of Nostalgia, by Svetlana Boym, and she addresses these complex social and cultural relationships. She’s interested in nostalgia as a historical emotion and how that feeling can transcend individual psychology.

GREISS: Oh, it’s kind of like a collective experience that affects a whole generation.

SALANE: Yeah, exactly. She discusses the erection of monuments and their presence as remainders of heroes and anti-heroes of a place, and how myths are made possible by fissures of recollection over lifespans and reinterpretations of mass media and popular culture. But I remember she says this really interesting thing about how nostalgia tantalizes us, and it’s about the repetition of the unrepeatable materialization of the immaterial.

GREISS: I feel like nostalgia can be seen as a phantom of time, and that idea is really in line with the way I work with materials in general, I think. For example, in this exhibition I’m opening, I’m using two wooden boards that I found at the Mawlid, and they were used as doormats as an entrance to someone’s home. But I’m repurposing them and hanging them on the wall and reframing them with glass and clips, which is meant to give you a different sensibility about time and space. These objects speak of absence in a way, and a condition where objects remain and human presence only survives as a visual impression. With prints, for example.

SALANE: That’s interesting. So the footprints in these mats are from the people who helped host the Mawlid.

GREISS: Exactly. And in general, I like to work with objects that have gone through layers of time and usage. I’m also really interested in the way that cities are laid out, and how urban planning affects us physically and psychologically. For a show I had in 2021, I remapped an experience I had on the train, in which I sat on somebody’s train seat that was still warm, and it inspired the entire show because I realized that this warmth felt from the seat created a sense of tension and separation, but our bodies almost seemed to touch. So energy and transfer and chance are elements that form perception in an urban environment, and I feel like you also do this in your work.

SALANE: Yeah. That’s super interesting because I’m very interested in the contact that a city can host. I’m specifically interested in the objects that reflect systems within our place. For example, I think you remember, but at the Whitney, I had this project where the doormats actually remind me of this project a bit. I used coins that I bought from the transportation system at auction, and they were used for bus fare but had no monetary value. And there were tokens from arcades, casinos, and religious places. I thought that this collection accumulated over two years reflected the intimacy of a pocket of a commuter in New York City, and all the places we forget that we have been to. I see that within a lot of your works, that we have this object of contact, but then you don’t have the person present.

GREISS: Totally. Coins are also a peripheral timestamp, just like these doormats. It shows the movement of people, but doesn’t fully define them.

SALANE: And going back to periphery and the Water Lilies and Monet’s lack of horizon, it makes sense. The divisions of foreground and background are just too orderly for how we consume a place subconsciously.

GREISS: Yeah. I feel like you have to crash things into each other to find out what they’re made of.

SALANE: Yes.

in conversation with Alan Gardner, Emergent Magazine Issue 11, published 18 June 2024

ALAN GARDNER: I’m interested in the notion of possession in your work: Specifically in the distinction between what it means to possess something vs. to be in ownership of it. Can you offer a distinction between the two and how that may play out in your work?

RAFIK GREISS: Possession likely stems from the need to control our surroundings, and is often rooted in our basic human instincts for survival and security. This instinct has evolved to include a desire for ownership of materials as a means of providing comfort, status, and a sense of identity. By taking these objects, discarded or for sale and using them in my work, the distinction between possession and ownership pretty abstract. It is in constant flux, and rooted in transience. From one person’s avarice, to another person’s generosity, objects are perpetually shifting and nothing lasts forever.

AG: Something about your practice which grabs me is this sense of wandering, the implication that it's necessary for the artist to follow impulses or ideations without the necessity of hyper-specific directions or outcomes. Do you think that this practice of wandering, searching, or pursuing has affected your life outside of your work as well as within it?

RG: I think that it’s important not to be very specific when starting a project and pigeon-hole yourself in a formulaic way of thought, and to stay as open as possible about your surroundings. I do not want to pursue a one-dimensional view in my work. It’s different stimuli entering different minds, to create totally different perspectives about the same experience. It’s about a vast curiosity to dig deeper into different levels of consciousness. I don’t see life and work as very different, it’s all an experience that deserves be questioned.

AG: To be a collector of things is a practice in itself, a curatorial intention which either explicitly or implicitly establishes a narrative - around the collector or collection. Do you seek these objects with the intention of producing works (Images, objects, installations, videos - not necessarily the item itself) or do you often find yourself collecting without an awareness of where it will lead?

RG: I am often collecting images, videos, writings, objects from dumpsters/flea markets, not knowing where the objects would end up. That’s what attracted me to photography from the beginning, it’s a collection of experiences, transformed into two-dimensional sculptures. I found it a medium that allowed me to relate to the viewer in a much more straightforward way. I’ve always held back from decipherable narratives. It shouldn’t be only about self-expression. I want to do exactly the opposite. It’s about the bombardment of experiences. The works are less about particular objects, but more about the inquiry of the objects in one’s life, and how they react together. You have to crash things into each other to find out what they are made of.

AG: I like the way you discuss migration, providing focus on the detritus of psychological experience of movement (internally and externally) to create an almost haptic sense of said experience. It’s a magical principle, almost like a fetish object. Do you feel like objects can be imbued with this migratory experience or is their communicability more symbolic?

The notion of 'imbuing' objects with any sort of experience is complex and ambiguous, even from the artist's perspective. On one hand, the objects in my work can take on a haptic, almost fetishistic quality which simply emerges from the surplus of meaning present in gallery settings. At the same time, I'm equally interested in relinquishing authority and focusing on just the formal dimension of objects, autonomous from its surrounding. It's important to me to find that balance between the relational and the formal — to see the objects as carriers of symbolic meaning, but also as narratives in their own right.

AG: Could you talk about what it means to exhibit these types of objects in an art context, specifically white cube style exhibition spaces? I’m thinking specifically about the continuation/discontinuation of the life of an object eg. When something becomes art, that tends to be the end of its life cycle, it is discussed up to the point that it becomes an art object. I feel like the continuation of that life and what it means to exist as an artwork - one which may be in a collection, displayed as decoration separate from its concept/context or even thrown away due to a lack of space for storage.

RG: This ties back to your first question about the different notions between possession and ownership. When you take something that once belonged to someone, and transform it into an art object, it’s original context becomes somewhat more irrelevant I actually never see myself as a creative person, I see myself as a very practical person. When entering a gallery space, I want to extract meaning from objects when removed from their original context, or ‘harmonious’ context. The best quality about a space is that it was constructed to decapitate relations and meaning, and isolating objects from it’s original purpose. I don’t want to manipulate the objects so much — their change of context is enough to add the appearance of monumentality. It is about re-contextualizing reality to make the us question our immediate surroundings.

AG: Your work, especially the recent works like those exhibited in Nooks and Crannies, seems to employ increasing aesthetic markers of wear. I’m interested in how you feel like these pieces of appropriated material act in dialogue to the imagery placed on and around them?

RG: In simplest terms, when an object is abandoned, it begins shedding its original function. Over time, its’ function become less legible through dilapidation, and the moment images are superimposed onto these objects, it raises them into an entirely new environment. However, I don't use this notion as a gimmick to justify the works in themselves. Rather, it's the symbiotic aesthetic relationship that develops between the image and the object — although separate materials — that synthesize both realities. It’s about a particular continuum of a sensorium.

AG: Photography remains a consistent part of your practice. How do you feel it integrates with the increased use of installation/sculpture? What is the role of a photograph/er in the context of contemporary art practice when the global practice of taking pictures has been so significantly altered over the course of the last decade?

RG: First, I find that photography as a medium plays with universality; even though we can share an experience, we won’t necessarily perceive it the same way, and that shows in the photograph. Second, we live in an era where lines between actuality and fabrication are not only blurred, but even the separation of the two are almost meaningless. There is a new way of understanding reality, one through lens-based practice. The photographs shouldn’t argue a claim so much but suggest subjects that should be discussed and analyses. How much context actually matters in these works? What I want to introduce in my work is the idea of images as a substitute for matter; photo as a two-dimensional sculpture, and in terms of sculpture, which is more about found objects, I don’t want to manipulate the objects so much. And when an object gets combined with photography, I feel there is a certain synthesis between these two realities that make sense to me.

AG: Finally, I have the impression that feeling is an overarching theme in your work. Specifically the ability that sensation (particularly visual, but also tactile) sensations act as visceral triggers for emotional experience of sense-memory. Is this something you consider conceptually in your work or is it a byproduct of the practice?

RG: It’s definitely a byproduct of the practice. It’s about intuitively communicating a sensation, which doesn’t have to be expressed vocally. I feel work can be viscerally exciting in that way, almost in a form of synesthesia — as an orchestra of some kind. All mediums are in one way an extension of each other, it’s about telling an experience. If I can visually feel something, that world becomes instantly tactile. I’m attracted to images and objects that have this feeling because the gesture extends itself outside the image and into one’s senses — it’s this receptivity, in all aspects of my work, that I try to produce.