NAÏMA DESCENDANT UN ESCALIER 2017Single-channel video installationcolour, no sound, 40 sec
Naïma Descending a Staircase is a short video that references Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase as well as Gerhard Richter’s Ema (Nude on a Staircase).Halloubi invites a friend of North African descent to descend a public staircase in Brussels, wearing a T-shirt printed with an image sourced from the Black Panthers archives. The image depicts a naked Black woman in a combative stance.
Through this video, Halloubi seeks to disrupt — in a critical sense — both the tradition of Western figurative painting and the public space itself.
The video also explores the relationship between still image and moving image. Naïma Descending a Staircase is presented in a loop, allowing the viewer to see a woman descending the steps not as a body offered to the gaze, but as an assertive presence, both political and social, within the public realm.