Khayamiya 1 | Push

Two wrestlers braced against each other, pink and yellow bodies on a ground of yellow and black cloths, brick-red background. Dated 2020, it is the earliest of the six textile pieces on show: Louis Barthélemy transposes Senegalese wrestling into khayamiya, the Egyptian art of hand-sewn appliqué. Each mass of colour is a West African bazin cut, laid and embroidered onto cotton canvas by the master craftsmen of Cairo; the push, the first move of the bout, becomes a composition of solid shapes answering one another.