About the work

Massinissa Selmani’s work aims to create drawn forms mingling a documentary approach with fictional constructions and animations, while taking as its point of departure contemporary political and social issues from press cuttings. Through confrontation, juxtaposition and even the superposition of actual elements, whose contexts have systematically been concealed, the artist creates enigmatic, ambiguous scenes unlikely to happen in reality. He bears witness to the absurdity of human behaviours and always balances these depictions within the realms of the comical and the tragic, or architecture as an instrument of power. By arranging large white spaces and playing on effects of transparency and reserve, he invites us to fill in the gaps, to question the way we remember and write history, beyond any linear structure. In this way, he also raises questions about the production process but also the circulation and diffusion of media images, as well as the way they influence our perception of historical and current events.

Date and country of birth

1980, DZ

About the artist

Born 1980 Algiers, Massinissa Selmani lives in Tours and Tizi-Ouzou. Graduated from Computer science, University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria (2003); and DNSEP, École des beaux-arts de Tours, France (2010).

Selmani’s practice is made up of drawn forms that emphasize the documentary dimension of drawing and the narrative processes that result from it, creating works at the frontier of the real and the unreal, the political and the poetic, the comic and the tragic, which are characteristic of his work.

Selected solo exhibitions include Le calme de l’idée fixe, Centre de création contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCC OD), Tours (2019); Choses fortuites, Château d’Oiron, Oiron (2019); Ce qui coule n’a pas de fin. SAM Art Projects Prize, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); and Les choses que vous faites m’entourent, Selma Feriani gallery, Tunis (2017). Selected group exhibitions include The wall at the end of the rainbow, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2020); Waiting for Omar Gatlato, The Wallach Art Gallery, New York (2019); Incursioni D’arte Nella Civiltà, Fondazione Pierluigi e Natalina Remotti, Camogli (2019); Inhabiting the Mediterranean, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM), Valencia (2018); No Looking Back, Okay?, Maribor Art Gallery (2018); A Slice through the World: Contemporary Artists’ Drawings, Modern Art Oxford (2018); Tamawuj, 13th Sharjah biennial (2017); Social Calligraphies, Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Warsaw (2016); All the world’s futures, 56th Venice Biennale (2015); La vie moderne, 13th biennale de Lyon (2015); and Produire le commun, Dak’Art – Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain, Dakar (2014).

Awards include SAM Art Projects Prize, Paris (2016); Art Collector Prize, Paris (2016); and Special mention, 56th Venice Biennale (2015).