User:Cecemoseley/Mounir Fatmi

Artist Practice

(Why he creates and what materials)(needs condensing/paraphrasing)

Fatmi's videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures are influenced on issues of identity, religion, multiculturalism, consumerism, the ambiguities of language and the importance of communication. He creates work through political deconstruction of dead media and the collapse of industrial and consumerist civilization, his work can be placed between Archive and Archeology. In his work, he uses antenna cables, copier machines, old typewriters, VHS tapes, saw blades, books, and flags to create compelling compositions.

"His work deals with the desecration of religious object, deconstruction and the end of dogmas and ideologies. He is particularly interested in the idea of death of the subject of consumption. This can be applied to antenna cables, copier machines, VHS tapes, and a dead language or a political movement. His videos, installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures bring to light our doubts, fears and desires. They directly address the current events of our world, and speak to those whose lives are affected by specific events and reveals its structure. "

"From these visions will emerge the essential aspects of his artistic work. Influenced by the idea of dead media and the collapse of industrial and consumerist civilization, he places the work of art between Archive and Archeology. Under the prism of the Language, Architecture and Machine trinity, he questions the obsolescence of materials such as antenna cables, old typewriters, photocopiers or VHS tapes. His artistic research constitutes the development of a thought on the history of technologies and their influences in popular culture"

"Always a witness to the complex socio-cultural fabric of contemporary life, fatmi stands out thanks to his stylistic approach capable of relating to highly topical issues such as identity, multiculturalism, the ambiguities of language and the importance of communication as a social thermometer of human developments.

Using performative and participatory experiences, the artist brings the narrative back to the mechanisms of communication understood as cultural stratification, translating the precariousness of a historical moment marked by a sense of vulnerability and collective uprooting.

The Milanese exhibition closes with the works Heavier than words (2020), Coma, Manifesto (2018) and Calligraphy of the Unknown (a series that continues from 2014), in which fatmi focuses on a recurring theme in his expressive parable: the power of language and its fascinating indecipherability. Highlighting the value of communication, as a fundamental collective experience, the artist nevertheless measures its failures, steering the narrative towards misunderstandings and the ambivalence of an obligatory precariousness, certainly complex and at times twisted, but all the same a synthesis of an authentic emotional landscape"

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Awards

Solo Shows
 * Shortlisted Jameel Prize 3, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2014
 * Uriöt prize, Amsterdam
 * Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor at the 7th Dakar Biennale in 2006
 * Cairo Biennale Prize in 2010

2021


 * The Observer Effect, ADN Galeria, Barcelona


 * The Age of Consequences, Officine dell'Immagine, Milan
 * Heavier than Words, Conrads Gallery, Berlin

2018


 * This is My Body, Art Bärtschi & Cie, Geneva
 * Fragmented Memory, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
 * (IM)possible Union, Analix Forever, Geneva
 * Darkening Process, Analix Forever, Geneva
 * Inside the Fire Circle, Lawrie Shabibi , Dubaï
 * Transition State, Officine dell'Immagine, Milano
 * Le Pavillon de l’exil, Galerie Delacroix, Tangier
 * The Index and The marchine, ADN Platform, San Cugat del Vallès
 * Darkening Process, MMP+, Marrakech, Morocco

2015


 * Permanent Exiles, MAMCO, Geneva
 * Modern Times, Miami Beach Urban Studios Gallery - Florida International University, Miami Beach
 * Art et Patrimoine: C'est encore la nuit, Prison Qara - Institut Français de Meknès, Morroco

Group Shows

2021


 * Setouchi Asia Forum 2021: Artists’ Breath Live, Setouchi Triennale, Setouchi

2019


 * INSIGHTS #5 - SCREEN IT, Art Brussels, Brussels

2018


 * Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale, Echigo Tsumari, Niigata

2017


 * Tunisian Pavilion, The Absence of Paths, 57th Venice Biennale 2017, Venice
 * 7eme Biennale d'Architecture de Shenzhen, Nantou Old Town, Shenzhen
 * Rencontres de Bamako, 11eme Biennale Africaine de la Photographie, Bamako
 * Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will, 5th Thessaloniki Biennale, Thessaloniki
 * Sublime de Voyage, une biennale en camion - Un hommage à James Lee Byars, Biennale art nOmad
 * Re-Orientation, 2nd Biennale de la Méditerranée, Sakhnin
 * Contemporary Creation and Social Dynamics, Biennale de Dakar, Dakar

Biography to Paraphrase

Mounir Fatmi was born in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1970. When he was four, his family moved to Casablanca. At the age of 17, he traveled to Rome where he studied at the free school of nude drawing and engraving at the Academy of Arts, and then at the Casablanca art school, and finally at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

He spent most of his childhood at the flea market of Casabarata, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tangiers, where his mother sold children’s clothes. Such an environment produces vast amounts of waste and worn-out common use objects. The artist now considers this childhood to have been his first form of artistic education, and compares the flea market to a museum in ruin. This vision also serves as a metaphor and expresses the essential aspects of his work. Influenced by the idea of defunct media and the collapse of the industrial and consumerist society, he develops a conception of the status of the work of art located somewhere between Archive and Archeology.

Since 2000, Mounir Fatmi’s installations have been selected in several biennials, the 52nd and 57th Venice Biennales, the 8th Sharjah Biennale, the 5th and 7th Dakar Biennales, the 2nd Seville Biennale, the 5th Gwangju Biennale, the 10th Lyon Biennale, the 5th Auckland Triennial, the 10th and 11th Bamako Biennales, the 7th Shenzhen Architecture Biennale, the Setouchi Triennial and the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial in Japan.