Catalogue > At random

Imagine a film about police brutality, with no brutality. A film where nothing happens, yet you’re left baffled. Invisible violence, disguised under lawful humiliation. Domination wrapped in polite protocols. I started talking about making this short film back in 2018, but the idea of it was haunting me probably since the late 90s, when I started being constantly stopped by the police for “random identity checks”. I felt a certain urgency to tell this very personal story. With the series of sculptures in cast aluminium that can be read as an esquisse to Généalogie de la Violence wider project, Mohamed Bourouissa aims to convey the intimate sensations that a formal procedure can induce, the traces that a systematic judicial practice can leave, both on and in the body. These sculptures represent moments of palpation during body searches. They evoke a tension between body parts and the hands that palpate it and reveal a point of contact between social bodies and a state body. The artist reveals an intimate experience of what the notion of control imposes in terms of bodily dispossession. The interiority of this experience is reflected by the void in the works. Through them, Mohamed Bourouissa represents an emotional dynamic that involves the enactment of two male bodies, highlighting the power dynamics and domination by one body over another.

Mohamed Bourouissa was born in 1978 in Blida (Algeria), and lives and works in Gennevilliers. He is represented by the Mennour, Paris and Blum Los Angeles galleries. Exhibited in 2010 by the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d’Art Moderne on the occasion of Dynasty, an original association between the art center and the Musée de la Ville de Paris to highlight a new generation of French artists, Mohamed Bourouissa has since exhibited in numerous museums and international biennials (Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles ; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; New Museum, New York; Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Frankfurt am Main; Bal, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Biennales de Sydney, Sharjah, Havana, Lyon, Venice, Algiers, Liverpool, Berlin; Milan Triennale… ). Mohamed Bourouissa’s work is included in numerous public and private collections (Centre Pompidou, Paris; SF Moma, San Francisco; LACMA, Los Angeles; Pinault Collection; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; The Israel Museum, Israel…).