Painter
Abdelghafour Essafi
Old family snapshots, anonymous couples, children and parents, scratched, cut, inked and overprinted: Abdelghafour Essafi turns forgotten souvenirs into masks and apparitions.
The artist
Photographs as raw material
Moroccan artist Abdelghafour Essafi works from photographs gathered by chance, images of people now cut off from any affective proximity, like bottles fished out of the ocean of time. He intervenes directly on them with his own signs and gestures, pencil, pen and inks, cuts, corrosions, hollowings and repetitions, diverting the documents without erasing the memory they carry.
Persona
As the writer Joël-Claude Meffre observed, the work recalls the Latin “persona”, the actor’s mask: Essafi appropriates these figures by disfiguring and refiguring them. Two little girls in white dresses see their gaze captured by the dark silhouette of a man seen from behind; a cheerful family snow scene is haunted by a figure veiled in black whom no one seems to notice. Appearance and disappearance, palimpsests and strange transparencies make each image a meditation on the memory of bodies and their shadows.
Landmarks
- Series of reworked souvenir photographs: deconstruction and reconstruction
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In the same spirit
Discover works by Meryem El Alj, Noureddine Ouarhim and Cheaib El Barki, or browse all Moroccan works for sale.
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Frequently asked questions
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