Artists in residence

Born in Rabat in 1984, Zineb Benjelloun is an artist trained in fine arts and documentary filmmaking. Since 2013, her practice has focused on drawing and writing.

The forms that her works take are cartography, graphic novels and illustration. Her work focuses on the relationship between the intimate and the collective, and seeks to understand how history shapes us as individuals and societies. By dissecting the everyday life in her graphic narratives, she questions dominant discourses and acquired knowledge.

Zineb Benjelloun has exhibited in Morocco and abroad, including La Gaîté lyrique in Paris, Voice Gallery in Marrakech, Ministerium für Illustration in Berlin, the Cité de la bande dessinée in Angoulême and the Tanit Gallery in Beirut. She designs visual identities for cultural events, brands and associations such as Rock en Seine in Paris, Les Nuits sonores in Tangier or Quartiers du monde in Rabat and publishes in specialized graphic arts books (Samandal in Lebanon, Slanted in Germany, Dyptique in Morocco and Fractal in Mexico). She also leads writing and drawing workshops with children and visual arts schools in her country and abroad.

Zineb Benjelloun has also had the opportunity to participate in several artist residencies including Dar al mamùn in Marrakech, RAW material company under the direction of Chimurenga in Dakar and the TRAME residency program at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.

She currently lives and works in Casablanca where she develops her writing and exhibition projects, including her first graphic novel to be published in 2021 by ça et là publishing house in Paris and the Le Sirocco publishing house in Morocco.

Born in 1989 in Algiers, Mouna Bennamani is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Initially graduated from the National School of Tourism and Heritage Preservation in Algiers, she continued her studies in visual arts at the Ecole Supérieure des Métiers des Arts et de la Culture in Aix en Provence. In 2017, she was selected by SciencesPo Paris for the program “Femmes d’Avenir en Méditerranée” where she developed her knowledge on the issues of the relationship of the arts to politics and society as well as the place of women in the latter. In February 2022, she was a finalist in the third edition of the international art competition “Emerging painting invitational prize (EPI)” in Cape Town, South Africa.

Her artistic career is reflected in several exhibitions in Algeria and around the world, such as the Encuentra Internacional del Arte Mediterraneo in Alicante, New York, for the exhibition Waiting for Omar Gattlato at the Wallash Art Gallery, or in South Africa, France and Japan. Her artistic concerns revolve around the study of the body through the prism of gender, its representation, and its interaction with its physical and social space.

During her residency at the Cité internationale des arts, Mouna Bennamani will present the project Retour à l’anormal (Return to the Abnormal) which is a visual reportage of her own medical and social experience, questioning the norm, but also trying to reappropriate her new body, a normality that is still unknown to her.

During this residency, she will develop, in her creation, a new narrative space through the field of immersion, a transversal approach crossing the image, the object and the space. Borderline works, hybrids.

Through this project, the artist seeks to explore the strange connection between her previous works and her malformation. By transforming this ordeal into an artistic experience in a cathartic gesture.