At Bologna’s Fondazione MAST, Mohamed Bourouissa dares us to recollect. In Communauté, his most expansive solo exhibition in Italy up to now, the Franco-Algerian artist tugs on the seams of society by means of 20 years of creative apply. The present brings collectively 4 of his most main initiatives, every a research in how people assert dignity inside programs designed to miss them.
Bourouissa’s profession is one largely formed by the narratives of these dwelling on the edges of visibility. Working throughout mediums, his items chart the undercurrents of energy and id that construction and form on a regular basis life. His breakout sequence Péripherique (2005-2008), for instance, paints an trustworthy portrait of post-riot Paris, gathering buddies, household and different non-actors to stage scenes of rigidity and violence with the compositional drama of Nineteenth-century portray.
In Horse Day (2013–2019), the artist captures Black cowboys in North Philadelphia reclaiming the mythology of the American West. Bringing each horse and horsepower to thoughts, printed pictures seem on automotive hoods and fenders as riders affirm their presence in a frontier that attempted to erase them, with tales of survival and delight in-hand. In the meantime, Shoplifters (2014), explores a special form of portraiture. By way of 19 Polaroids, Bourouissa challenges the criminalization of poverty by means of grainy captures of would-be stolen detergent bottles, egg cartons and biscuits.
Communauté additionally marks the debut of his most up-to-date mission. HANDS (2025) reframes pictures from earlier sequence in chilly, sculptural encounters. Metallic accents and deconstructed figures evoke concepts of management, coercion and the dearth of contact in an more and more surveilled world.
Bourouissa’s lens isn’t impartial, neither is it didactic. Holding a mirror as much as the mechanisms of contemporary life, Communauté reminds us that artwork, at its sharpest, doesn’t merely observe the world, however unsettles it.
The exhibition is now on view in Bologna by means of September 28.
Fondazione MAST
By way of Speranza, 42,
40133 Bologna BO,
Italy
