Abdessamad El Montassir

Abdessamad El Montassir (1989, Morocco) is a visual artist. Collaborating with scientists, citizen-witnesses and activists, he develops an artistic practice at the crossroads of research and creation. His works are the fruit of a meticulous process in which the collection of immaterial testimonies and collective narratives revives oral memories that are often buried and silenced by official history.

Her projects explore the notion of trauma and the way in which violence, whether experienced, (in)transmitted or anticipated, is embodied in the bodies of those affected. In this process, non-human entities such as plants play a central role. His residency projectÂabidel’kadia focuses on the Maddahas, groups of poets in Mauritania. He proposes a plunge into the spaces of resistance borne by these communities, thanks to a rhizomic narrative that connects the testimonies of militants, the songs of the Maddahas, language as a tool of domination, hairstyles as cartography; all linked by the myth of a shell. On a broader scale,Âabidel’kadia reflects on situations of domination, where new models emerge as spaces of emancipation in constant reinvention.