The First Edition of LABA Paris

The first edition of LABA Paris is coming to a close. Its presentation will take place in Paris on November 18 and 19, after several months of intense exchange with artists as singular as Sarah Makharine, Milena Kartowski-Aiach, Rachel Marks, Frieda Guerson, Caspar Noyon, Julie Rebecca Poulain, and Sharon Alfassi, as well as with teachers of Jewish texts.

Founded in New York in 2007, LABA now has hubs in Berlin, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Barcelona, London, and now Paris. Its purpose is to nourish contemporary thought by bringing it into dialogue with Jewish tradition. The theme of this edition is change.

My project is part of the Futur Exhaussé cycle and unfolds around The Burial of the Tree of Memory.
The Tree of Memory is one of six genealogical trees from my installation Lignes de vie (2009), which traced the symbolic stages of human existence: birth, society, exile, memory, freedom, and the divine.
This tree was born of an intimate, restorative gesture — to offer a symbolic burial to members of my family who were never spoken of, murdered during the Shoah. Today, it becomes a material for transformation.

To bury this tree is to question our relationship with memory: should we preserve it, transmit it, or allow it to rest? It is to confront both the fear of losing and the need to be unburdened.

The residency offered me the time to face that fear, for this gesture holds a tension between the sacred and the sacrilegious: to bury a work is to risk betraying its memory, but also to rediscover the deep meaning of the sacred. It is to transform memory into fertile soil, capable of nourishing new forms of life and thought.

The presentation on November 18 and 19 is a work in progress, a living stage in the process leading to the filmed performance, about which I will share more soon.
Between closure and opening, The Burial of the Tree of Memory is a meditation on memory, mourning, and rebirth — an acknowledgment that memory is not a fixed duty, but a living substance, one that must sometimes be returned to the earth so that new forms may emerge.

I wish you fertile renewals.

LABA Presentation

November 18, 2025
6:00–9:30 p.m. – Vernissage / Opening
6:00–7:30 p.m. – Roundtable discussion with the artists, moderated by Anaëlle Gobinet-Choukroun

Please confirm your attendance via this link:
https://www.helloasso.com/associations/hineni/evenements/soiree-laba-paris