ADAGP / Bétonsalon Grant 2022

The artistic com­mittee of the ADAGP / Bétonsalon Grant met on May 23th, 2022 and chose Abdessamad El Montassir as lau­reate. He is the fifth artist ben­e­fiting from this grant after franck lei­bovici (2017), Liv Schulman (2018), Euridice Zaituna Kala (2019) and Anne Le Troter (2021).

The ADAGP / Bétonsalon grant, formerly asso­ci­ated with Villa Vassilieff, amounts to 20,000 euros and aims to accom­pany an artist in the devel­op­ment of a research, during sev­eral months. Bétonsalon – Center for art and research accom­pa­nies the artist in their research and pro­duc­tion pro­cess, the artist receives a 5,000 euros hono­rarium and 10,000 euros for pro­duc­tion.

Abdessamad El Montassir © Franck Alix & La Cinémathèque de Toulouse.

THE ARTISTIC PROJECT: MEMORY OF ASHES [MÉMOIRE DES CENDRES]

Originally from the Sahara South of Morocco (Western Sahara), Abdessamad El Montassir grew up in the town of Boujdour. This is the region where the pro­ject Mémoire des cen­dres [Memory of Ashes] is located, a pro­ject he would like to develop with the research and pro­duc­tion grant he received from ADAGP / Bétonsalon.

In this research, Abdessamad El Montassir wants to evoke the invis­i­bility of the recent his­tory of the Sahara, the traumas it has expe­ri­enced and the way they are trans­mitted. He will attempt to test alter­na­tive means of trans­mis­sion that respect the right to be for­gotten, and the way these traumas can be the basis for a new form of his­tor­iza­tion. What hap­pens to sti­fled mem­o­ries, con­fis­cated from col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion? What can images show or recount? How do you share “empti­ness”, “ab­sence”, “a ghost”? What shape does one give to for­get­ting?

Until 1991, the Sahara South of Morocco was the back­drop to a long con­flict that left Saharan civil society deeply wounded. The pop­u­la­tions set­tled in urban areas to escape the con­flicts, putting an end to their tra­di­tional lifestyle, their freedom of move­ment, and above all, var­ious ances­tral forms of trans­mis­sion. Today, despite à cease­fire approved by the UN, ten­sions still exist.

Using Sahara South of Morocco as the main study site for new forms of cre­ation and exper­i­ments with trans­mis­sion of memory, this pro­ject will be inspired by the book Necessità dei volti and its annexes, pre­served at the Kandinsky Library. There are very few copies of this book; not a single one exists in the region. Thus, despite this pub­li­ca­tion, there are still no local archives. This absence of archive opens with ques­tions that con­cern the pos­ses­sion and spread of images, par­tic­u­larly when they involve war or col­o­niza­tion sit­u­a­tions: Who is speaking? From where? Instead of whom?

With this pro­ject, Memories of Ashes [Mémoire des cen­dres], Abdessamad El Montassir will envisage future tra­jec­to­ries of indi­vidual, col­lec­tive, human and non-human iden­ti­ties, in response to the absence of a nar­ra­tive and the amnesia that haunt the Sahara.

ABDESSAMAD EL MONTASSIR

Born in 1989 in Boujdour, Morocco.
Lives and works between Boujdour and Marseille.

Abdessamad El Montassir’s research focuses on a trilogy begun in 2015: the right to be for­gotten, fic­tional and vis­ceral nar­ra­tives, and the trauma of antic­i­pa­tion.

Abdessamad El Montassir is a grad­uate from the Tetouan National insti­tute of Fine Art and holds a master’s degree in Artistic Production and Aesthetic Education from the École Normale Supérieure in Meknès.
From 2017 to 2020, he was an artist-researcher affil­i­ated to the l’IMéRA – Institut Méditerranéen d’Études Avancées in Marseille.

His work has been shown at sev­eral national and inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tions, including Quand je n’aurai plus de feuille curated by Gabrielle Camuset, at la Villa du Parc à Annemasse, Ce qui s’oublie et ce qui reste curated by Meriem Berrada and Isabelle Renard, at the Musée national de l’his­toire de l’immi­gra­tion in Paris, Demain c’est seule­ment dans un jour online, curated by Taous R. Dahamni for Le Jeu de Paume Lab, Surgir des cen­dres in the con­text of Chroniques - bien­nial of dig­ital imag­i­naries in Aix-Marseille, Invisible curated by Alya Sebti for the 13th bien­nial of con­tem­po­rary African art in Dakar and the ifa-Galerie in Berlin, Leave No Stone Unturned curated by Clelia Coussonnet, at Cube - inde­pen­dent art room in Rabat, De liens et d’exils at La Villa Empain - Fondation Boghossian in Brussels, Saout Africa(s) in the con­text of Documenta 14, at SAVVY Contemporary à Berlin.

Abdessamad El Montassir has also par­tic­i­pated in sev­eral artists’ res­i­den­cies including Solitude Fellows at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and the Programme Art, Science et Société à l’IMéRA in Marseille.

An inte­gral part of Abdessamad El Montassir’s research is his reg­ular par­tic­i­pa­tion in con­fer­ences and his col­lab­o­ra­tion with research insti­tu­tions like the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin or l’Institut Méditerranéen de la Biodiversité et d’Ecologie marine et con­ti­nen­tale in Marseille.

Abdessamad El Montassir, Galb’Echaouf, 2021
HD video, stereo sound, 18’43’’
Project sup­ported by AFAC - The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture,
Institut français du Maroc, Pro Helvetia Cairo, Embassy of Foreign Artists,
Le Cube - inde­pen­dent art room, Rabat et La Maison Salvan, Labège.
© Abdessamad El Montassir / ADAGP.

Abdessamad El Montassir, Galb’Echaouf, 2021
HD video, stereo sound, 18’43’’
Project sup­ported by AFAC - The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture,
Institut français du Maroc, Pro Helvetia Cairo, Embassy of Foreign Artists,
Le Cube - inde­pen­dent art room, Rabat et La Maison Salvan, Labège.
© Abdessamad El Montassir / ADAGP.

Abdessamad El Montassir, Al Amakine, 2016-2020
Installation of light boxes and sound room 8.1.
Project sup­ported by Le Cube – inde­pen­dent art room, Rabat, Carte
Blanche by Al Safar, l’Institut Français du Maroc, Pro Helvetia Cairo, l’IMéRA
with the help of Labex RFIEA+, the Chronicles plat­form coor­di­nated by SECONDE
NATURE and ZINC and the gmem-CNCM-Marseille.
View of the instal­la­tion at the bien­nial Chroniques, by Pierre Gondard.
© Abdessamad El Montassir / ADAGP.

ARTISTIC COMMITTEE 2022

Eva Barois, inde­pen­dent curator, art critic and editor
Katia Kameli, artist affil­i­ated to ADAGP
Anne Le Troter, lau­reate of the 2021 grant
Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, curator, head of Bibliothèque Kandinsky
Émilie Renard, director of Bétonsalon

THE ADAGP / BÉTONSALON RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION GRANT

This grant is intended to allow an artist to develop a six-month research pro­ject on ques­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, pro­duc­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of images, based on one or more pho­to­graphic col­lec­tions of the Kandinsky Library that they can iden­tify. These reflec­tions can belong to the field of art - rereading of art his­to­ries, explo­ration of ignored and marginal­ized life paths, com­po­si­tion of new artistic lin­eages... - but also in the very mate­ri­ality of pho­to­graphic images - their making, archiving, repro­duc­tion, exhi­bi­tion and mul­tiple forms of cir­cu­la­tion.

ABOUT ADAGP

Created in 1953, ADAGP is the French roy­alty col­lecting and dis­tri­bu­tion society in the field of graphic and visual arts. 

Supported by a global net­work of almost 50 sister com­pa­nies, it cur­rently rep­re­sents more than 110 000 artists in all dis­ci­plines of visual arts: painting, sculpting, pho­tog­raphy, archi­tec­ture, design, comic strips, manga, illus­trating, street art, dig­ital cre­ation, video art and so on.

ADAGP man­ages all the prop­erty rights held by artists (resale right, repro­duc­tion right, right of public com­mu­ni­ca­tion, col­lec­tive rights), for all modes of use: books, media, adver­tising, mer­chan­dise, auc­tions, gallery sales, tele­vi­sion, video on demand, web­sites, user sharing plat­forms and so on.
 Thanks to its rich, diverse cat­a­logue, it is now one of the biggest col­lecting soci­eties in the world.

ABOUT BIBLIOTHÈQUE KANDINSKY

The Kandinsky Library, doc­u­men­ta­tion and research center of the Musée National d’art Moderne - Centre de Création Industrielle at the Centre Pompidou, pre­serves and makes avail­able to a spe­cial­ized audi­ence impor­tant archives and doc­u­men­tary col­lec­tions on 20th and 21st cen­tury art.