Faculty Laurent Pernot Featured on SELECTIONS
“This piece connected me with a deeper sense of home. A feeling. A feeling that was covered in an icy sparkling white material. It was still. Motionless. Alive on the inside. Dead on the outside. This resonated strongly with what seems to be a recurring question I have had for 20 years now: will the snow melt so I can find the warmth of that home?”
SELECTIONS is a platform for the arts focusing on the Arab World and consists of Selections editorial, Selections Viewing Rooms and Cultural Narratives foundation.
In order to answer the question “Can the representation of an image ever recreate or reflect the experience that would usually take place in a physical encounter?”, SELECTIONS set off on a quest and invited 10 guests to describe one artwork of their choice, first in an objective way, and then more subjectively and contextually. The results were featured in their experimental catalogue.
Hala Khayat, a Middle-Eastern senior art specialist, writer, curator, art collector, philanthropist and the regional director of Art Dubai, chose to write about Laurent Pernot’s work.
She discovered his artwork Still Life – Flowers while visiting a friend in London, and was struck by it. Her amazment was caused not only by its frozen beauty, but also because it connected her to a “deeper sense of home.” She found herself thinking a lot about Pernot’s piece during her confinement and later reached out to him to have the opportunity to discuss.