Fayçal Baghriche

"The works Souvenir and Epuration elective employ different materials, but echo one another in a number of ways. The former is a luminous terrestrial globe, which turns so fast that it is impossible to distinguish continents or the demarcations that separate them from the oceans. For the latter work, I have vastly enlarged a page from a dictionary representing all the flags of the world and erased everything except the stars.

The installation evokes a simple, childlike decor: the Earth and the sky, or the universe and our planet. However, both works involve the deliberate blurring or erasing of specific elements which disrupts our perception of familiar images and national symbols. The terrestrial globe spins at such high speed that it blurs continental outlines and the geographical space of individual countries. The starry canvas is the result of a diligent exercise of erasure. National identities are done away with by distorting one of the most significant symbols of statehood – the national flag. The works invite us to look beyond superficial appearances and re-apprehend the reality they conceal."

1972 born in Skikda, Algeria, and lives in Paris, France. 

Fayçal Baghriche grew up between two cultures, navigating an Arab culture in the private sphere and Western culture in the public realm. This particular kind of double consciousness, common to those who have migrated to culturally different societies, has provided him with a perspective defined by the superimposition of two distinct cultural filters. His practice is characterised by simple gestures, which are often attainable without recourse to any specialist expertise. Drawing on fundamental principals of image rhetoric such as subtraction, inversion, or acceleration, he creates artworks that question the schema that organises human societies.

Fayçal has a diploma in Fine Arts from La Villa Arson, Nice and a BA in Dramatic Arts from Sophia Antipolis, Nice and an MA in Multimedia Creation from the National School of Fine Arts, Paris. He has exhibited widely both in France and internationally. He has participated in Brooklyn Euphoria, New York, and Dashanzi Art Festival, Beijing. He has shown his work in Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany; Al Riwaq Art Space, Bahrain; and The Museum of Modern Art Algiers, Algeria. He was included in La force de l’Art 2009, and took part in La Nuit Blanche, Paris, and Le Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse. In 2010 he showed at The Museum of Modern Art Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux, and Foundation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence. In 2011 he was part of The Future of a Promise, at the 54th Venice Biennale. This year his work will be exhibited at Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Poligono Gallery, Marbella; the Brotkunsthalle, Vienna; and Galerie Campagne Première, Berlin.

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