Mounir Fatmi

Was born in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1970. He spent his childhood at the flea market in the Casabarata district, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. An environment that multiplies waste and end-of-life items to excess. The artist later saw this childhood as his first artistic education and compared this flea market to a ruined museum or a barometer allowing him to understand society. He then questions his role as an artist in a society in crisis. 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. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, at the Fine Arts Academy in Rome and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

His work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions across Europe, Asia and USA. His installations have been selected for well-known artistic events, including the 52nd, 54th and 57th Venice Biennale, part of the first pan-Arab exhibition The Future of a Promise, the 5th Gwangju Biennale and the 10th Lyon Biennale, the 10th and 11th African Biennale of Photography in Bamako and the 7th and 13th Dakar Biennale. He was awarded the Cairo Biennale Prize in 2010 and was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, in 2013.

He now works and lives between Palma de Mallorca and Tangier.