Djabril Boukhenaïssi
Le Monde

Philippe Dagen’s Le Monde article presents the exhibition of Djabril Boukhenaïssi at the Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris, where the artist’s watercolors and engravings are placed in dialogue with Hugo’s own drawings, inks, and pyrographies, as well as with paintings once inspired by the writer’s novels and plays. This type of encounter between contemporary artists and historic figures has become a ritual over the past two decades, yet Boukhenaïssi faces the challenge at a notably early stage in his career. Despite his youth, his rapid rise and international recognition have secured him the invitation. 

The setting, Hugo’s house on Place des Vosges, is an especially demanding one, permanently inhabited by the imposing legacy of the writer. Still, Boukhenaïssi does not appear as an intruder; his longstanding passion for poetry naturally guides his approach. Having long drawn inspiration from German poets such as Novalis and Rilke, he now engages with Hugo as a kindred “poet of the night,” whose collection Les Rayons et les Ombres and emblematic verses like Booz endormi echo the same nocturnal sensibility that resonates in Boukhenaïssi’s art.