An exploration of the work of Silvie and Chérif Defraoui, important
pioneers of multidisciplinary and multimedia art and of art education in
Switzerland.
Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui, born in 1935, realized a significant part
of her work beginning in 1975 together with her husband Chérif
(1932-1994). Silvie and Chérif Defraoui compiled their photo and video
works, installations, sculptures, and performances under the title
Archives du Futur. They taught together at Geneva's École supérieure
des Beaux-Arts (today HEAD-Genève), where they founded the legendary
studio Média Mixte and taught a number of renowned artists.
The Archives du Futur, to which Silvie Defraoui has continued adding
works since Chérif's premature death, has been made available as a
digital catalog raisonné to browse online. This book accompanies,
supplements, and expands on the digital documentation. It gathers
fourteen commentaries on individual works of the two artists by
distinguished art theorists and curators, originally published from 1984
onwards in various art journals and exhibition catalogs or newly written
for this book. They reflect on the artists' joint oeuvre as well as on
work created independently by Silvie Defraoui. Interviews with her and
selected lecture texts from the couple's shared teaching activities shed
light on their artistic stance and thematic focuses.
The volume invites an exploration of an artistic body of work that is
highly topical through its merging of dualities--memory and the present,
Orient and Occident, man and woman, tradition and invention.
