Mnymosine

Diverting the contemporary world

As of 2012, I no longer make self-portraits, choosing instead to focus my creative process towards image reproduction. In several miniseries, I take over iconic imagery that leave their mark on our contemporaneousness. Through my gestural technique imprinted with by Arabic calligraphy, you can see portraits of Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

With my work, entrenched with current events from Middle East and Maghreb, I incorporate politics in my involvement and testimony. The miniseries You Were My Only love (2012) criticize the fierce brutality shown by police officers against demonstrators during the Arab Spring. In this new realm, we can still find traces of my identity as an artist through portraits of Vincent Van Gogh and Gustave Courbet, masters of self-portrayal in art history. They both appear as concerned witnesses of events.

Now that I am done taunting aniconism, I’m taking an interest in the trompe-l’œil technique. For example, in the serie The Last Poster (2012), portraits of Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak seem unfinished at first glance because they look like old posters, almost ready to be ripped from a dilapidated wall. In other series, there is also a sense of three-dimensionality due to the addition of a false-bottom wooden back. The trompe-l’œil in I’m sorry Father (2013) is of a different nature. For the observer, what seem to be the portraits of three innocent children reveal themselves to be Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, prominent figures compelling horror throughout History. I then challenge the ambiguity shown in every images as well as the impossibility to get the truth through portrayal.