Slimen Elkamel

• Biography

  
  

  Slimen Elkamel is a young visual artist and an art critic. He participated in numerous group exhibitions and held a solo exhibition in 2011. Elkamel was an art resident at the Living Arts Center at Rades in 2010 and paid multiple artistic and research visits to Paris, Algeria, and Bahrain. He currently teaches at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Sousse.

  Television watches us more than we watch it. The image is deeply rooted within us as a permanent material. Through this notion, the aesthetic constitution of this project is based on focusing on the image and its visual rationalization through an approach that renders it a primary material in though, composition, and development. Such an approach does not consider the image flat and of a single dimensional meaning. An image has depth, possessing a tangible effect of the past and a core to build the future.

  This iconophiliac use of the image presents a contradiction to the iconoclastic tendencies that stems from the commitment of the practice to social and political dimensions. Working with images is akin to interacting with lived reality. The relation of the body with everyday consumable objects is contingent upon the degree of necessary sensory mindfulness that represents the world in human terms. Such is the beginning of this project that is open towards its social and communicative parameters, virtually and in reality, and to all visual and auditory communicative channels.

  Eating, dressing, walking, sleeping, dreaming… All of these are moments where objects and images contribute, fueled by imagination. The body is haunted by images, and the painting is a multiple spaces where the criticial, comical, tragic, and poetic overlap. The painting is a crossroads of approaches towards mental and physical images. It is a democratic spaces of difference, a meeting space to debate, discuss, and interact. Our images lie in objects. We are in the image. We are images. Reflection is truth. Shadow is not an illusion, the image does not deceive, practice is an awareness of reality and its visual, audible, and virtual representations.

   

  Exhibitions

  EDUCATION

  2015 Managed the painting studio/workshop at the Centre des arts vivants de Rades

  2013 Art residency in Paris

  2013 Assistant at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Sousse

  2008-13 Essay publication in different newspapers, publications and art catalogues

  2011 Teaching Visual Arts (High-school)

  2010 Started a PHD thesis at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts of Tunis

  2010 Assistant at the Institut Supérieur des Arts et Métiers of Tataouine

  2009 Master in Techniques of Science and Art

  2008 Residency at the Centre des Arts Vivants of Rades, Tunis

  2007 Master in Visual Arts, specialising in Painting

  EXHIBITIONS

  2016 Yesterday is Tomorrow’s memory: a group show of work from North Africa, Elmarsa gallery, Dubai, UAE

  2015 Group exhibition SMAP art organised by Union of Plastic Arts

  2015 Group exhibition Talan

  2015 Group exhibition at the National Library of Tunis

  2012 Participated in workshops at the Centre des Arts vivants of Radés “L’imaginaire du quotidien”

  2012 Scenography conception for the theatre play ¨Ihtijej¨ “Manifestation”

  2012 Group exhibition “Tableau noir” at the Acropolium of Carthage - Tunis

  2012 Exhibition in tribute of Mahmoud Messadi

  2011 Group exhibition at the National Library of Tunis

  2009-11 Group exhibition at the Printemps des Arts of La Marsa,Tunis

  2009 Group exhibition at the Cultural Centre of Gabes

  2009 Scenography / creative direction of the theatre play “Rahil” / “Voyage”

  2009 Solo exhibition at the gallery Arty-Show, La Marsa, Tunis

  News

  Tunisie : quand l'art contemporain pointe le bout de son nez by Sonia Desprez , 23 june 2015 :

     http://www.grazia.fr/culture/expos/articles/tunisie-quand-l-art-contemporain-pointe-le-bout-de-son-nez-768324 

  Article by Helen Jennings on Tunisian art scene:

     http://www.nataal.com/tunisian-art 

  Luciano Benetton Collection :

     http://www.imagomundiart.com/artworks/slimen-elkamel-untitled 

  Artyshow Gallery, Tunis:
     https://vimeo.com/20463169