Rita Alaoui

Rita Alaoui is a French-Moroccan artist, born in Rabat in 1972, who lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the Parsons School of Design New York, where she lived until the end of the 1990s.

Fascinated and amazed by the force of nature, Rita Alaoui directs her approach on the incessant representation of a dreamlike and sacred nature. While she is strongly inspired by the wild landscapes and the particular light of Morocco that rocked her childhood, her work ultimately focuses on the universal. She mixes several references, from the art of the garden to which she gives an animist dimension, recalling a certain romanticism.

Beginning as a painter, Alaoui has varied her modes of creation, ranging from painting to drawing, photography, installation, vidéo-performance and the creation of artists' books. With a protocol which can recall the practice of botany or archeology, she puts at the center of her work the collection, accumulation and observation of objects that she finds in nature. These items are then organised meticulously in the temple that is her studio, giving them a form of sacredness or unsuspected spirituality. Each small fragment, stone, bone, plant, becomes a rich subject for the artist who pays particular attention to their, often unusual, shapes and textures.

The question that drives Rita Alaoui's research is her role as an artist in relation to this silent material that surrounds us: it is for her reproducing the remains of nature left by the passage of time, rethinking our connection to the wild world, re-interpreting the familiar and imagining connections with the extraordinary.

Her paintings explore the details of natural and apparently ordinary objects, which she collects, which she sometimes stages in pictorial works that recompose spaces and relationships between these objects. Thereby, the view from the garden as seen from her studio has led her to create pictorial works in which she composes spaces where she confronts objects or furniture within a domesticated natural environment.

Recent exhi bitions include: In the Blood, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (group - 2024); As Feeling Births Idea, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (group - 2024); Parle-moi du jardin de ta grand-mère, Centre Tignous d’art contemporain, Montreuil, France (group - 2024); The Silent Garden, Galerie Siniya28, Marrakech, Morocco (solo - 2023); SANS RÉSERVE, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France(group - 2023); Supra Nature, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France (group - 2023); Et L’art Alors ? (Alaoui, Santos, Tingaud) Café Parisien, Saulieu, France (group - 2023); Orpin, Orangerie du Parc Prieuré, Conflans- St. Honorine, France (solo - 2022); Orangerie du Parc Prieuré, Conflans-Sainte Honorine, France (solo - 2022); Artefact, Galerie 127 Montreuil Vos Rêves, Paris, France (solo - 2020); Et l’art alors ? Café parisien, Saulieu, Bourgone, France (group - 2020); Anamorphia, Galerie Kulte, Rabat, Morocco (solo - 2019); Venus D’ailleurs, Galerie Villa Delaporte, Casablanca, Morocco (solo - 2019); Un instant avant le monde, Biennale de Rabat, Rabat, Morocco (group - 2019); Objets Trouvés, Galerie Delacroix, Institut Français de Tanger, Tanger, Morocco (solo - 2018); Make It Yourself, Espace Culturel Douta Seck, Dakar biennale, Dakar, Sénégal (group - 2018); Field Work, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (group - 2017)

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