Massinissa Selmani, Algiers
All works from: A-t-on besoin des ombres pour se souvenir?, 2015.
About:
Massinissa Selmani draws. Even if his drawings sometimes come to life, he remains an illustrator, with all of the delicacy and poetry that is inherent to drawing.
When he speaks of drawing, the artist describes it as taking note of something. The word is important, one takes note of the limits of a territory when surveying, the number of license plates in a police film. To take note of something is to identify. Doing so can be rapid or time-consuming.
To take note of the world, is perhaps Selmani’s most important work. In French, the word relever can mean to note or to raise up. So Selmani as the ’releveur’ is both noting and bringing up situations. Using images of print media, the artist notes and raises anecdotes, news, and life as it is, to reproduce all of it in incredible staging, in the drawings without place, without time, and without context.
Born in Algiers in 1980, Massinissa Selmani lives and works in France. After studying computer science in Algeria, he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts of Tours which he graduated in 2010 with honours. The practice of Selmani is an experimental approach of drawing and animation drawing, he explores through various processes projection by multiplying media and techniques. His works attempt to capture the ambivalence of social or political situations. The flow of images that deliver news and press feed his works.(text Dak’Art 2014)