In IF THE NORTH WIND WERE TO OPEN THE DOOR , Alain Freixe and Ernest Pignon-Ernest have created a moving artist's book dedicated to Samia Yusuf Omar , the Somali athlete who disappeared in the Mediterranean. The poem, sensitive and fragmented, evokes a shattered spirit and a quest for freedom. Ernest Pignon-Ernest extends this voice with luminous intensity. He chooses pastel, a medium he rarely uses, and from it creates a series of drawings of tragic gentleness. To respond to the vivid memory of the walls on which Ernest Pignon-Ernest affixes his images, a rough surface—reminiscent of city stone—is applied by Bernard Alligand , a virtuoso of materials.

 

“...Yesterday, when you wanted to run! To run without counting the clear notes of each stride, the fire in your throat, the swelling of your chest and heart. And for your body to follow you! / To run then was to leave. To risk the blisters of summer evenings, to open yourself to the unknown of travel, to risk the stranger, to go towards the child, that dweller of the impossible, whose legs had raised the dust of the trails with all their innocence... ” Excerpt from the poem by Alain Freixe