Lydia Ourahmane — The Third Choir

Lydia Courahmane’s work always leaves me thinking about movement, stillness, and the invisible infrastructures that shape our lives. She transforms everyday materials and industrial objects into installations that carry stories of migration, displacement, and temporality. 

One artwork that has stayed with me is “The Third Choir”. It’s a monumental installation consisting of 20 oil barrels paired with 20-channel stereo audio, arranged in a large display. The barrels are industrial, heavy, and rigid, yet their placement and the accompanying sound create a delicate, almost fragile rhythm with the audio producing overlapping ethereal tones that move through the gallery space. The barrels are aligned in a grid-like formation, but subtle gaps and offsets give each one room to “breathe”.

Oil barrels are usually associated with industrial weight, strength, and rigidity, yet here they are instruments of delicacy and reflection. Suspended in the gallery, they transform into carriers of memory, rhythm, and presence. While the barrels themselves are tangible and heavy, the 20-channel audio fills the space, creating a sense of enormity that contrasts with the individual, fragile voices of each barrel. It’s a tension between intimacy and monumentality. You are aware of each object but also of the collective impact.