M’Barek Bouhchichi

M’barek Bouhchichi was born in 1975 in Akka, Morocco. He graduated with a degree in visual arts from the Regional Pedagogical Center of Rabat. M

He has been teaching art since the mid-1990s, first in Tiznit and now in Tahannaout where he lives. Through installations, paintings, drawings and videos, his work creates a space for oppressed existences.

Shadowless portraits

The body is a theme with multiple ramifications in the work of M’barek Bouhchichi. Hands, heads, faces, footprints become metaphors for invisible bodies struggling to form one. They refer to the fragmentation of the human body and the bursting of perception. It therefore assigns to the viewer the responsibility of reconstituting the many imaginary and symbolic meanings of the image of the exploded body, or of getting lost in the opacity of such fragmentation.

This plastic work on the body therefore opens up to a social and political thought. The notions of identity, corporeality, difference and otherness are explored there. This thought evolves in M’barek Bouhchichi with the researches opened by artists and researchers on the representation of the black body since the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. It also follows the rhythm of its demands and positions. They are so many opportunities for the artist to shed light from a personal angle on the ways in which the black body fits into the social space and the plastic field.

He also archives traditional craft practices and foregrounds the act of making as a means of challenging cultural hierarchies and established divisions of labour and value.

His work has recently been exhibited at Dak’art (Dakar), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), Kulte Gallery and Editions (Rabat), Goodman Gallery (Cape Town), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Mu.Zee (Ostend), Galerie Selma Feriani (Tunis), among others.

He participates in the group show “Colors of Alkebulan” at Galerie 208 from April 20 to June 20, 2023.