SLIMEN ELKAMEL

Visual artist Slimen Elkamel was born in 1983 in Mezzouna, in the Sidi Bouzid region of Tunisia. His childhood was nourished by popular stories, shaped by the imagination of a rural environment where the tradition of storytelling and poetry thrived.

His studies at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Tunis allowed him to crystallize this literary and intellectual heritage into a unique artistic practice. A practice whose genesis begins through writing and draws its resources from texts—sometimes poetic or literary, sometimes memorial or improvised.

Daily scriptural practice, while delimiting, also expands the horizons of Slimen Elkamel’s visual universe. Close to free figuration, the artist interrogates the relationship between reality and imagination through the theatricalization of the constellated image.

The figure of reality hovers in the space of imagination and prolific abundance, where the transfiguration of social and popular facts into a surreal vision takes place.

Images of memory and images of reality, taken from everyday materials, intersect in a pictorial field where, at the surface of the canvas, the murmur of an endless dialogue begins—not to narrate a fact, but to celebrate storytelling itself.

Since 2011, Slimen Elkamel has participated in numerous solo exhibitions (Tunis, London), group shows (France, Dubai, Senegal, Morocco, England), and has been regularly represented since 2016 in various international contemporary art fairs. His works are part of collections in many institutions, including the Blachère Foundation (France), the Alain Servais Collection (Belgium), the Gandur Foundation (Switzerland), and the Museum of Contemporary African Art Al Maaden (Morocco). His most recent works will be shown in a solo exhibition he is preparing at the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2022.




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