Made in 1997, this metaphorical assemblage with Supports‑Surfaces overtones marked a turning point in the artist’s practice: from the painting as form to painting as object, multiple or installation. Placed directly on the ground like the bundles that one carries from one place to another, twenty rolls of canvas, now a medium, receptacle and vector of memory, bear the imprint, revealed by rust, of old house keys evoking those that the Palestinian refugees of 1948, thinking that they wouldn’t be gone for more than a few days, kept about them forever afterwards, in the hope of a possible return. (text by Sophie Jaulmes)