Massinissa Selmani

Name: Narrative practices, drawing as a witness
Start: 2019-08-12T19:00:00+02:00
End: 2019-08-12T20:00:00+02:00
Location: Galerie 5020

Narrative practices, drawing as a witness

12 August 2019 / 7–8 pm CEST

Galerie 5020

Massinissa Selmani, Untitled 2 (no plan is foolproof)

Untitled 2 (no plan is foolproof), 2019, graphite and coloured pencil, 50 x 65 cm

Massinissa Selmani’s media are drawing and animation. In his Artist Talk, he will present two recent projects: one looking at the French anarchist Louise Michel, who gave a series of lectures in Algeria in 1904; the other devoted to the construction of a thousand socialist villages in Algeria during the 1970s.

Himself an Algerian, Selmani developed these works without direct reference to historical archives. His interest lies in questions of memory, land partitioning, social struggles and architecture as a form of power, and he sees drawing as a documentary form capable of expressing far more than words can. Beyond colonial or post-colonial questions, he is concerned with the traces and the resonance of these historical events in the present age. Little-known facts merge with (hi)stories, myths and fictions to shape new insights.

Massinissa Selmani, born in Algiers in 1980, lives and works in Tours (FR). Massinissa Selmani’s work finds its origin in socio-political issues, taken from the press cuttings he has been collecting for a number of years. It is through confrontation and juxtaposition, without a logical coherence between these real-life elements, that Massinissa creates enigmatic and ambiguous scenes, underlining the ironic, even tragic character of the absurd and strange situations represented in his drawings. Through an experimental approach to drawing and animation, Massinissa Selmani showcases the documentary dimension to his drawing practice, playing on the boundary between reality and unreality, comedy and tragedy, so typical of his work. (see www.samartprojects.org/ massinissa-selmani-2/)

Solo exhibitions
2019 Le calme de l’idée fixe, ccc od (centre de création contemporaine olivier debré), Tours. Choses fortuites, Château d’Oiron, Plaine-et-Vallées (FR). 2018 Ce qui coule n’a pas de fin. SAM Art Projects Prize, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Episodes. École européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne, Lorient (FR). Poles apart, Museum of African Art, Belgrade. 2017 Les choses que vous faites m’entourent, Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou, Paris. Même dans la pierre, il y a du sable, Galerie de l’Etrave, Thonon-Les-Bains (FR). Le vent ne veut jamais rester dehors, Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis.

Group exhibitions
2019 Dimension supplémentaire, Salle St-Martin, Souillac (FR). Signes personnages, ccc od, Tours. Waiting for Omar Gatlato, Wallach Art Gallery, New York, NY (US). Drawing Biennial 2019, The Drawing Room, London. 2018 Inhabiting the Mediterranean, Institut Valenci. d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia (ES). No Looking Back, Okay?, Maribor Art Gallery, Maribor (SI). 2018 A Slice through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings, Modern Art Oxford (UK). Drawing Lab: Cinéma d’été, Drawing Lab, Paris. To live in the mediterranean, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia (ES). Gold, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo. No Looking Back, Okay?, Maribor Art Gallery, Maribor (SI). 2017 Marcher dans le réve d’un autre, Biennale d’architecture d’Orléans, Frac Centre, Orléans (FR). Tamawuj, 13th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah (AE). Drawing Biennial 2017, The Drawing Room, London. I want! I want!: Art & Technology, Birmingham Museum and Art, Birmingham (UK). Where the f*ck is my sock, Akinci Gallery, Amsterdam.

Publications
Ce qui coule n’a pas de fin, With the support of SAM Art Projects Prize, Paris 2018.
Poles Apart, With the support of the Museum on African Art, Belgrade 2018.
Digital Monograph, Naima Editions, Paris 2016.
Bleu comme une orange, Prix Art [ ] Collector, Paris 2016.

www.massinissa-selmani.com