Installation view of Latifa Echakhch's solo exhibition, "Les Albatros," at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

What do large-winged albatrosses, aging Virginia Oak trees and artists have in common?

In the eyes of Moroccan Swiss artist Latifa Echakhch, they all embody qualities seen as inefficient and ungainly by "real, everyday society."

Moroccan Swiss artist Latifa Echakhch / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Albatrosses, as depicted in Charles Baudelaire's 1841 poem "L'Albatros," face ridicule from sailors after being snared from the sky onto the ship's decks, left to hobble pitifully with their now uselessly big wings. Mature Virginia Oak trees, unable to bear the weight of their own growth, are recognized by their drooping limbs that plunge toward the ground instead of rising upward.

And what about artists? Neither their way of life nor their work is optimized for efficiency. In the strictest sense of functionality, art can seem downright pointless and detached from reality.

"Having all these loud feelings and incapacities, we artists are not adapted to [so-called] 'normal' life. We are too sensitive. We look like strangers all the time," Echakhch told The Korea Times in a recent interview in Seoul.

But for her, the very things that render these three existences inefficient are what can make them most beautiful — the seabirds' formidable wings fluttering freely in the sky, the tree branches that sag more and more with the passing of time and the artists' ability to come to terms with their precise position within this world.

"It's about accepting that your wings may be too large for the ground but are majestic and useful in the sky," she said. "I don't believe an artwork can save someone, but it can make somebody feel not alone anymore. My social function is to be aware of that and to pick out this feeling to give it back to people, who may not have the time, patience or tools to do it [on their own] — feelings that they can understand and recognize themselves in."

Installation view of Latifa Echakhch's solo exhibition, "Les Albatros," at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

A close-up view of Latifa Echakhch's "L'Albatros" (2024) / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

The unlikely trio of motifs beautifully converges at Echakhch's first solo exhibition in Asia, "Les Albatros," at Pace Gallery Seoul — in the show's title, the subjects of the paintings and the whole staging of the exhibit itself.

Stepping into the gallery's ground floor, visitors enter a pitch-dark room, with the only colors emanating from the artist's five new paintings of evergreen oaks. Even these pieces are mostly swallowed by darkness, however, as the draped canvases have been flipped to reveal their black-painted back sides. The sagging shapes of the 8-meter-long fabrics evoke both the heavy wings of the albatross stuck on land and the plunging limbs of Virginia Oak trees.

More importantly, this particular staging almost entirely conceals Echakhch's artistic labor that went into creating her pictorial landscape. The lush trees gracing the front of the canvas remain largely hidden from view.

The decision to conceal the evidence of her physical efforts made in bringing her art to life, and instead blend them seamlessly with the surrounding walls, stems from Echakhch's personal belief in how "pretentious and arrogant" it seemed to present an apolitical, disengaged and purely contemplative landscape during today's tumultuous times.

"All this last year, I saw so many paintings by Monet, Cezanne and other historical artists who treated this subject. I suddenly had the desire to paint a landscape myself. But at the same time, [this desire] seemed so pretentious," she said.

"Monet was painting during the war; there was a war outside and he was in his garden painting vegetation. I found that so crazy, but I also felt so related to that. We are living in times of total uncertainties and violent extremes. And I felt this arrogance of an artist wanting to paint the natural landscape and believe in the idea of beauty. This was something I had to resolve in my head."

In the end, by choosing not to let her creative labor shine alone, and instead presenting it as if it were physically merging with the surrounding space, she reconciled with what it means to paint a landscape in our times as an artist.

Installation view of Latifa Echakhch's "The Concert" at the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Art Biennale in this photo by Samuele Cherubini / Courtesy of the artist

Over the last two decades, Echakhch has gained global prominence for her sculptures that deconstruct materials and recontextualize them through the lens of postcolonial geopolitics and cultural identity.

In recent years, the artist has also begun incorporating the concept of musicality into her site-specific installations.

"I came to realize that the two worlds — sound and visual art — are not so different. They both deal with space, gesture and temporality," she noted.

For "The Concert," her project for the Swiss Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Art Biennale, she envisioned the sensation of arriving in the space just moments after the concert had come to an end.

"When the music stops and there is silence, you still hear music in your memory. Just like how we can close our eyes and imagine an exhibition we saw before, we can close our ears and imagine the concert we heard before."

Whereas light served as the only musical instrument in the silent space in Venice, for her Art Basel project, "Der Allplatz" in Switzerland the following year, she reintroduced live performances of experimental musicians onto her deconstructed stage.

"This journey into sound and music opened my eyes in a new way, much like when I first discovered contemporary art."

"Les Albatros" runs through Aug. 17 at Pace Gallery Seoul.