When Latifa Echakhch visited the museum in Iasi, Romania, she noticed that no avant-garde artists were featured in its collection. She began studying the history of Romanian art, and discovered that during the years 1920–1940, quite a few avantgarde publications appeared in the country: 75HP, Contimporanul, Integral, Simbolul, Chemarea, and Punct. The sparse attention currently dedicated to the avant-garde in Romania is perhaps partially explained by the fact that most of these artists left the country (usually due to political persecution, especially of Jewish artists), and are thus not considered to be true Romanians.
These avant-garde publications featured reproductions of art works, portraits and poems printed from linoleum etching plates. Linoleum has an entirely different cultural resonance for Echakhch, a Moroccan immigrant living in Switzerland and in France. She associates this material with the coated floors of public housing projects, and thus with social and economic disadvantage. Echakhch is less interested in the final result – the etchings themselves – and focuses on their potential as a matrix for mass distribution. This technique, whose prevalence was due to its low production cost, now once again appears as especially relevant. (Florence Derieux)