Memory, Forgetfulness, Historicization: Artist Abdessamad El Montassir in Conversation

With Brooklyn Quallen ’25 and Emma Chubb, SCMA Curator of Contemporary Art
Reception to Follow

Join us for a conversation with SCMA’s spring 2023 Artist-in-Residence, Abdessamad El Montassir. El Montassir’s interdisciplinary and research-intensive work brings together poetry, artifacts, plants, and architecture to explore questions of memory, trauma, and the environment in North Africa, particularly in the Sahara. The artist will share excerpts of recent film projects, followed by conversation and audience Q+A with Smith College student Brooklyn Quallen ’25 and Emma Chubb, SCMA’s Charlotte Feng Ford '83 Curator of Contemporary Art. 

About Abdessamad El Montassir

Abdessamad El Montassir was born in 1989 in Morocco, and currently lives and works in Boujdour and eastern France. He graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts of Tetouan and the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Meknes. From 2017 to 2020, he was an associate fellow at IMéRA - Institute for Advanced Study in Marseille. He is currently the recipient of the MÉCÈNES DU SUD grant and the ADAGP x Bétonsalon grant, for which he is developing a project in partnership with Bétonsalon and the Kandinsky Library of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

He has participated in several exhibitions including Mémoire des cendres curated by Paul de Sorbier at Maison Salvan (Labège), Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono for the 13th Bamako Encounters (Bamako), Les Sentinelles curated by Pascale Cassagnau and Camille Leprince at Institut du Monde Arabe (Tourcoing), Leave No Stone Unturned [Remuer la terre] curated by Clelia Coussonnet at Le Cube - independent art room (Rabat), Ce qui s’oublie et ce qui reste curated by Isabelle Renard and Meriem Berrada at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (Paris), Invisible curated by Alya Sebti for the Dakar Biennale and the ifa Gallery Berlin. 

Photo of Abdessamad El Montassir by ©Franck Alix / La Cinémathèque de Toulouse.

Related campus programming