MILA KISS – REQUIEM
24.10.2018 - 01.12.2018
Mila Kiss is a young filmmaker of Hungarian descent, born in Paris. The turmoil of her adolescence led her to immerse herself in a world shaped by obsessions with the deep sea and its creatures, as well as with uniforms and young girls, where the same colours recur: aquatic blue, the white of a glass of milk, and the red of blood.
In the opening credits of Requiem, a film she made at the age of 18 in 2016, we read this quotation from Guérin-Méneville, dated 1839: “Sharks were called Requiem in the 18th century.” These creatures, which Mila Kiss has watched, studied and filmed, occupy a singular place in her work. In the exhibition presented at Rue Antoine gallery, which takes its title from the film — REQUIEM — a funeral ode to adolescence coexists with this fierce creature, thirsting for blood and life. It is a space in flux, where the body struggles, starves and sinks before rising again, floating. A space where, alongside a collection of memories and objects still in the making, reflective poems, embroidered boxing hand wraps, faded roses, a mermaid, and filmed and dissected sharks come together.
Kids after Kids #2
A few years ago, I was asked to write a text about adolescence and art. My first thought was Larry Clark, the only artist I felt could do justice to the subject, and one of the very few to have truly captured that age. And yet artists and creators at this stage of life remain virtually invisible on the art scene. So, abandoning the idea of writing a text for lack of subjects to write about, I went out to meet those concerned: young people engaged in a creative process that grows alongside them. I asked around and searched within my own circles.
A first encounter took place in 2016 with Samuel Berrebi, who, then aged 18, had just completed a medium-length film made during his final year of high school. Circumstances allowed me to arrange a meeting between the young filmmaker and Larry Clark, which resulted in a filmed interview and a photographic portrait published by the gallery in 2017.
It was on the occasion of a second encounter, with the young filmmaker Mila Kiss, introduced by Liza Journo, a student and journalist, that I asked the two of them to conceive an exhibition together, entitled Requiem, inspired by Mila Kiss’s first film, made when she was 18.
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