Mounir Fatmi was born 1970 in Tangier, Morocco. He is a multimedia artist who lives and works in Paris, France. Growing up, Fatmi lived across from the museum of archaeology in Rabat, Morocco. Here he got to see all the prehistoric and pre-Islamic artefacts including the Muslim artefacts from the middle ages found at the Sala-Chellah site. This sight reminded him of the flea market in the Casa Barata quarter of Tangier, where he was born. He passed time there playing among the televisions, radios and electronics which had once had a life, a time of glory, before falling into disuse. When he looked at these objects Fatmi found himself reflecting on the uses of technology and how far technology had come. They also compelled him to take a critical position towards the history of the technologies and their influence on popular culture.
Fatmi’s formal art education began in Rome, Italy where he studied at the free school of nude drawing and engraving at the Academy of Arts. He went on to the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, Morocco, before going back to School of Fine Arts in Rome and then finally studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. His multimedia practice encompasses video, installation, drawing, painting and sculpture, and he works with obsolete materials.
Image courtesy of Goodman Gallery
Mounir Fatmi has always been curious about the transformation of objects and how, with a small alteration in context or positioning, they can take on entirely new meanings. Now, he regularly goes back into the archive, transforming materials into a highly charged body of work. By using materials such as antenna cable, typewriters and VHS tapes, Fatmi elaborates an experimental archeology that questions the world and the role of the artist in a society in crisis.
He twists its codes and principles through the lens of a trinity comprising Architecture, Language and Machine. This goes on to question the limits of memory, language and communication while reflecting upon these obsolescent materials and their uncertain future. His artistic research is the examination of the history of technology and its influence on popular culture. Consequently, one can also view Fatmi’s current works as future archives in the making. Though they represent key moments in our contemporary history, these technical materials also call into question the transmission of knowledge and the suggestive power of images and criticise the illusory mechanisms that bind contemporary human beings to technology and ideologies.
He has participated in the exhibition L‘objet désorienté as organised by Jean-Louis Fromentat at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. In 2016, he launched The Exile Pavilion which considers what it means to be an artist outside of one’s own cultural context. He was selected for the exhibition Fundamental at the Fifth Mediations Biennale of Poznan in Poland and for the Triennial of Setouchi Awashima Community Area in Japan. In 2017, he participated in the exhibition The Absence of Paths: 1st Tunisian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.
