Abdessamad El Montassir

Abdessamad El Montassir (1989, Morocco) is a visual artist. In collaboration with scientists, citizen‑witnesses, and militants, he develops an artistic practice at the intersection of research and creation. His works are the fruits of a meticulous process in which the collection of intangible testimonies and collective narratives serves to revive oral memories that are very often buried and silenced by official history.

His projects explore the notion of trauma and the way in which acts of violence experienced, (un)transmitted, or anticipated are incarnated in the bodies of those touched by them. In this process, non-human entities such as plants play a central part. His residency project Âabide l’kadia focuses on Maddahas, groups of poets in Mauritania. It plunges us into the spaces of resistance borne by those communities, through a rhizomatic narrative that connects testimonies of militants, songs of Maddahas, language as a tool of domination, hairstyles as cartography, all connected by the myth of a shell. On a broader scale, Âabide l’kadia offers a reflection on situations of domination, where new models emerge as spaces of emancipation constantly being reinvented.

Portrait © Franck Alix – La Cinémathèque de Toulouse