"Ben Bella moves towards a reinterpretation of European painting practices, leaning into a style that evokes a remembrance of forgotten language through the use of colour, line and object."
Mahjoub Ben Bella was born in 1946, in Maghnia in the province of Tlemcen, Algeria. Studying art at the Fine Arts School of Oran until the age of 19, he left for France to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tourcoing and finally at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He settled permanently in Tourcoing in 1975.
Ben Bella traverses’ terrain both physical and spiritual, arduously piecing together a practice of intricate mark-making, embedment and labyrinthine layering. With an ode to automatism, Ben Bella moves towards a reinterpretation of European painting practices, leaning into a style that evokes a remembrance of forgotten language through the use of colour, line and object. Inviting the ability to create fictions all the while referencing the artefact, Ben Bella embraces the ritual of process. Throughout his practice, He can be found referencing the science of letters, cosmology and amulets found in Sufi cosmological theory whilst being influenced by the Nkisi Nkondi sculptures of the Mayombe region of the Congo across medium. Having painted invariably on canvas, paper and three-dimensional medium such as ceramic and wood, He is not only the maker but the ritual specialist too.
Ben Bella often created within the realm of endurance. Through numerous exhibitions around the world and acquisitions by prestigious collections and museums, his mastery of various techniques and media was also stated in his monumental works: Mural of the international airport in Riyadh (1982), a 12 km painted cobble-stone roadway for the international cycle classic Paris-Roubaix (1986), the mural of Nelson Mandela at the Wembley stadium in England (1988), a 4000 m² artwork projected on stage in the Pacaembu stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil (1999) and also the design of 1 800 ceramic tiles in the subway station of Tourcoing in (2000) in France.