Soufiane Ababri’s new commission, Their mouths were full of bumblebees but it was me who was pollinated, explores questions of desire, queerness, and diaspora / in the Barbican Curve Gallery

First monograph by Soufiane Ababri (born in 1985, Morocco), The rose gives birth to a thorn and a thorn gives birth to a rose brings together a previously unpublished series of 34 drawings. Male portraits and flowers of all kinds dominate this ensemble to create a poetry that is both raw and symbolic, marked by a lively passionate, carnal aspect, which shines through even in the artist's pencil stroke.

By using the intimate format of the sketchbook – a medium in which each image was initially sketched – the work published by The Steidz invites us to enter into a personal story that is both iconographic and epistolary. The book begins with an email from Soufiane Ababri sent to a certain “Guillaume” of whom we only know the first name, then ends with an essay by sociologist Antoine Idier which, like a response to the email, sheds light on the themes dear to the artist that we find in his work: racial relations, homosexuality, love and even identity.

Print run of 500 copies, numbered inside of the back cover.

Hardback

Language: FR / EN

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 17 x 23cm