Axel Derriks

Axel Derriks photographs sacred and vernacular architecture the way one records a script on the verge of being erased. For more than fifteen years he documented the Ibadi mosques of Djerba, low sanctuaries whitewashed in white and blue and bristling with buttresses, many of them falling into ruin. Carried out alongside the historian Virginie Prevost, this work led to two reference publications, including "Résistance et dévotion. Anciens sanctuaires ibadites de Djerba" (British Institute for Libyan and Northern African Studies, London, 2023). His photography looks less for the monument than for matter and light: the grain of lime wash, the shadow of a dome at dawn, the humble geometry of a village. Now based in Dakar, he extends this gaze between the Mediterranean and West Africa. The prints presented by Armature, "Coupoles et minaret, Robbana", "Aube sur la médina de Tunis", "Chaux bleutée, ville sainte" and "Trois frères, désert de sel, Siwa", were born of this attention to the architecture and the light of the South.