Tarek Lakhrissi

“Tarek Lakhrissi's forms are volatile and when they show up, it's always to better get away. It should be specified from the outset that there is no preciousness of the infrathin here, any more than there is no politeness of obliteration: this would still be to concede to the center its full powers, and to the norm its permanence. On the contrary, when, for his first personal exhibition, the artist lines the ground with sand (Chameleon Club, 2019), when he hangs his spears and stakes at face height (Unfinished Sentence II, 2020) or when he darts the severed tails of a salamander into space (This Doesn't Belong to Me, 2020), it is indeed about disidentification.

These three recent sculptural installations by the artist, presented respectively during a solo at La Galerie, CAC de Noisy-le-Sec, and collective exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and at the CAC Brétigny, as well as at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, distilled so many strategies which, to resilience, combine cunning. Born in 1992 in Châtellerault, completed a master's degree in theater studies in Paris and Montreal before officiating for a time at the queer Parisian bookstore Les Mots à la Bouche, Tarek Lakhrissi is now based in Brussels. His journey, like the spirit that infuses each of his pieces, he builds it through interweavings and concentric circles: mediums on the one hand, traversing film, video, performance and installation; scenes on the other hand, surrounding themselves with allied presences past and present, real and fictitious.”

Tale of facts. He grew up in the suburbs of Poitiers and never thought he would become one of the most prominent contemporary artists of his generation. Today, he goes on exhibitions, teaches artistic practices in Geneva and is on the shortlist of the prestigious Pernod-Ricard prize. His work, which navigates between video, text and sculptures, speaks of marginality, social violence and identity determinism.

Mirror of Thought. In 2020, for his installation Unfinished Sentence II, he hangs spears that are both threatening and fragile at the height of the faces of Palais de Tokyo visitors. The taste of words. Before becoming a visual artist, he was a bookseller for six years in Paris. Jean Genet remains one of his favorite authors. Le Journal du voleur also inspired his metal sculpture Perfume of Traitors, exhibited in August in a London gallery.

“Initially trained with a degree in literature, the French-Algerian artist Tarek Lakhrissi identifies as both an artist and poet, and the work is deeply rooted in the power of language. Each project stems from a piece of canonical writing, whereby Lakhrissi reimagines text as a weapon against political or social marginalisation, specifically within the queer community. This idea of language as defence bleeds into a reflection on contemporary queer identities, and self-defence as self-love. The new commission at MOSTYN draws from both the song “My Immortal” by the 2000s American band Evanescence, and John Milton’s classic 1667 poem, “Paradise Lost,” to question the meaning of community—again, with a focus in particular on the queer community—and its stability, or conversely, vulnerability. (He also regularly references 1990s pop culture, citing subversive icons like the era’s TV heroines ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Xena: Warrior Princess,’ who both excelled at protecting themselves in the face of adversity, throughout his work.)”