Silvie und Chérif Defraoui – Archives du Futur

Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui realized a significant part of her work beginning in 1975 together with her husband Chérif (1932–1994). Silvie and Chérif Defraoui compiled their photo and video works, installations, sculptures, and performances under the title Archives du Futur. They taught together at Geneva’s École supérieure des Beaux- Arts (today HEAD–Genève), where they founded the legendary studio Média Mixte and counted a number of renowned artists among their students.

The Archives du Futur, to which Silvie Defraoui has continued adding works since Chérif’s premature death, has been made available as a digital catalogue raisonné to browse online. This book accompanies, supplements, and expands on the digital documentation. It gathers fourteen commentaries on individual works of the two artists by distinguished art theorists and curators, originally published from 1984 onwards in various art journals and exhibition catalogues or newly written for this book.

They reflect on the artists’ joint oeuvre as well as on work created independently by Silvie Defraoui. Interviews with her and selected lecture texts from the couple’s shared teaching activities shed light on their artistic stance and thematic focuses.

The volume invites an exploration of an artistic body of work that is highly topical through its merging of dualities—memory and the present, Orient and Occident, man and woman, tradition and invention.