Amina Benbouchta: Chrysalis

An affective understanding of the female voice through silence and empty spaces

Amina Benbouchta, Chrysalis VI from the series Chrysalis (2015). Image courtesy of the artist & Sabrina Amrani Gallery.

With text by Dalia Hashim, Tribe Magazine editor & linguist.

Benbouchta's series “Chrysalis” is both whimsical and uncanny. The figure witnessed is not an individual, but a compendium of “characters that are easily identifiable by their attributes,” she explains. Meet her avatars, a set of archetypes of the female experience “that evoke a puppet on a string obeying the puppet master.”' 

This series conjures up the different stages of a woman's life, but it is also meant to work like a game of Tarot. Just like in the visceral Tarot, we are encouraged to ask, what do they stand for? Certain objects reappear as tropes in Benbouchta's art, becoming familiar like the characters seen on Tarot cards: the Hermit, the Lovers, the Empress and so on. 

We are reminded that “the female voice flows in spite of the devices used to contain it. The idea of a moving metamorphosis, a fluid change of states, is a metaphor of hope and of the constant possibilities of evolution. Movement is hope.” The hard outer case that encloses the chrysalis is only temporary. When the butterfly finally emerges, she flies.