Born 1980. Algiers, Algeria
Lives and works Tours. France and Tizi-Ouzou. Algeria
Selmani’s work addresses contemporary and political issues through drawings that combine a documentary approach with fictional constructions and animations. He constructs situations that confront, juxtapose and even superposition the elements in a context that has systematically been concealed. Selmani produces exaggerated and enigmatic scenes inconceivable to reality, bearing witness to the absurdity of human behaviour. He balances depictions between the comical and the tragic and introduces architecture as an instrument of power.
He studied computer science in Algeria, Massinissa Selmani graduated from the École supérieure des beaux-arts in Tours.
He has recently exhibited at major museums and institutions, including Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France / the Dakar Biennial, Senegal / the Lyon Biennial, France / FRAC Centre, Orléans, France / Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK / IVAM, Valencia, Spain / the Museum of African Art of Belgrade, Serbia / Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. His work has subsequently been hailed by a special mention of the jury at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. In 2016, He received the Art Collector Prize and the Sam Art Projects Prize for contemporary art. In 2023, Selmani was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize.
Selmani’s work forms part of prestigious collections of art, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France / MAC, Lyon, France / Frac Centre Val de Loire, Orléans, France / Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh and / The British Museum, United Kingdom.