14
2017, video, 1 h 5 min,
“Under a terse and mysterious title, 14 is a video and a filmed experience that involves five actors and accomplices in the production of the work. Games are a central subject in the artist’s work, but she often slips the reality and the protocols through the diversion of rules, objects and the temporality of a game. 14 refers to a popular card game, a Rummy variant. Maha Yammine edited the cards by erasing the numbers and the colors: queens, valets and hearts, all disappeared leaving only the whiteness and the nakedness of the pale card. The back of the cards retains its neutral, decorative and generic motif. The disappearance, or rather the duality between insouciance and absence, is inscribed in this object, this modified card game. The artist then invited a group of casual players to meet as usual and play a few rounds of 14 with the modified cards. Without any intervention of the artist, (who does not act as a film director guiding the actors), the game was played and extended for more than one hour.
On our side, while watching the game unfold, we discover the importance of exchanges, nonverbal communication, relationships between the players, and the intrinsic humor. A game inside the game also appears: using habit and imagination, the players display card suites on the table, they draw cards, and make fictitious announcements. With no possible winner and no proven out- come, this game reveals its deep nature of distraction: a space of freedom, tranquility and shared proximity. By giving literally «carte blanche» to her players, Maha Yammine gives this minimal gesture a libertarian potentiality, on a thread between gravity and lightness: it abolishes the rules and the chance, to keep the superficiality of the game. That is to say, on the contrary its human and social depth.”
Xavier Jullien, curator,
Director of Espace arts plastiques de Vénissieux (Lyon, France), 2018