About the artwork
Mounir Fatmi's silkscreen invites us to enter the interior of a skull. The brain is replaced by interlacing curves and counter-curves that enclose the numbers 1 to 6. This is part of a verse from the Koran, which could be translated as "Are they alike, those who know and those who know not? Mounir Fatmi is one of those artists who have made art the channel for communicating their commitment.
Expert opinion
This motif has become a symbol of Mounir Fatmi's work. He produced this skull cut-out on a variety of occasions and in a variety of media, such as in 2008 for the exhibition Traces du sacré at the Centre Pompidou, where he created a large-scale mural. It is thus a highly representative example of the artist's work.
About the artist
Mounir Fatmi is an artist and video-maker who lives and works between Paris, Lille and Tangier. Born in Tangier (Morocco) in 1970, he spent his childhood in the Casabarata district, one of the city's poorest. Exposed to an impressive amount of garbage during this period, the artist considers them to be his first encounters with what art is, going so far as to compare the flea market where his mother worked to a museum in ruins. The impact of this encounter still permeates his work today, whose main preoccupations revolve around consumer and religious dogmas, which he constantly seeks to desacralize - if not deconstruct. His work criticizes as it reveals, in an approach somewhere between archaeology, archives and creation. Mounir Fatmi has exhibited at several biennials - including the 52nd and 57th Venice Biennales, the 10th Lyon Biennale and the 5th and 7th Dakar Biennales - and has had solo shows at the Migros Museum für Gegenwarskunst in Zurich, the MAMCO in Geneva and the AK Bank Foundation in Istanbul. His work has been awarded the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor at the 7th Dakar Biennial in 2006, the Cairo Biennial Prize in 2010 and, more recently, the Silver Plane Prize at the Altai Biennial in Moscow in 2020.
Additional info
Signed
Dated
Framed
Proof of authenticity
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