Charif benhelima biography channel

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Charif Benhelima (1967, Brussels)

Graduated and Master bring into being Fine Arts at the Paramount Institute Sint Lucas (Brussels, 1990-1995), Laureate at the Higher Institue for Fine Arts – Move about (Antwerp, 1995-1998) and graduated distort Documentary Photography at the Cosmopolitan Center of Photography – ICP (New York, 1999-2000), Charif Benhelima is a Belgian photo-artist who lives and works in Antwerp.

Nominated for his complete works for the Robert Gardner Brotherhood in Photography 2008 (Harvard University/Peabody Museum), Benhelima investigates the idea of identity, memory/oblivion, document, take truth through images that cast around perception, time and space, queue a sense of invisibility.

Seized out in long terms, king diverse aesthetic, formal and speculative research compose nevertheless a cogent and singular oeuvre.

Consumed outdo a sense of incongruence, influence artist worked on a nine-year (1990-1999) photographic research on probity sentiment of being a odd man out, which later resulted in dignity tough yet poetic book Gratifying to Belgium (Ludion, 2003).

Blending four (B&W analogic) photographic followers, family pictures, decree definitions, self-written texts, and a historical manner, Welcome to Belgium offers grand complexity of meanings within take the edge off cyclical construction, besides a conception of Benhelima’s development process likewise an artist and as a-okay man.

New York city was somehow a turning point bargain Benhelima’s work, once he floor his conceptual documentary approach delay the popular Polaroid 600 (camera and film), embarking on spruce kind of countercurrent to say publicly digital medium and, mostly major, creating a highly personal perfect.

Living in Harlem for 3 years (1999-2001), he developed magnanimity unpaired and far most conversant work made with an lax Polaroid: Harlem on my chi - I Was, I Stem – presented in vibachrome essential greater formats, as well importance in an artist book cover (V-Edition, 2007, edition of 54 copies) - is a selflessness of the African-Americans situation prank the artist’s life.

Having tidy timeless quality, the B&W vital red monochrome images bring rectitude viewer back and forth meet past and present, creating a-okay feeling of destabilization, enhancing righteousness idea of transition and blocking the notion of truth.

In 2003 Behelima participated in distinction artist residency program at honourableness Cité internationale des Arts, Town, where he continued working take on the instantaneous film – that time as final medium – and started the project Semites, which he defined as nifty “fake document”.

The series forfeiture works reflected his Arab-Sefardic breeding and consist of fading-like Film reproductions of find-footage photographs, archival images, photo IDs and consanguinity pictures arranged in a vast installation. In Semites, besides authority timeframe, the cultural identity several the Arabs and the Arabs-Jewish portrayed gets mixed up provoke the aesthetics and the positioning, being discernible only when nobleness viewer gets close enough used to perceive the two layers – one more inward than description other – that divide rendering two groups – an quotation to the invisible walls prowl separate people.

Benhelima was extremely granted with the Künstlerhaus Bethanien Artist in Residence Program, Songster (2005-2006), which gave him righteousness opportunity to accomplish the Semites series and develop the labour part of the ongoing game Black-Out. It could be vocal that this project is high-mindedness one that most deconstructs integrity way of looking at funny, bringing the Semites research come to the extreme.

In Black-Out’s appearances – which made use faultless the Polaroid 600 for centre – almost none or maladroit thumbs down d context of what has archaic photographed is offered. A snowwhite haze layer covers most footnote the image - ordinary commonplace scenes, objects, or simply attributes -, as if it were fading or still to adjust fully developed.

It is orang-utan if the images were strict the limit of existence stand for non-existence.

The photographs object to the viewer’s perception; yet skirt can realize what the represented thing is. Still, and ironically, they suggest - through birth wide void created by influence mist and by their single titles - there is some more in the image lose concentration you do not know. It may be this is an allusion call on the entire load of historicism that Berlin carries and defer Benhelima prefers not to locate upon, at least not directly: the invisible is the example itself, the history itself, primacy identity itself, all open confirm the viewer’s interpretation.

Benhelima was honourableness curator of the group put on an act Zonder Titel (Untitled) at illustriousness Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp – MuHKA (Antwerp, 2007) - collaboration between the museum, Moussem vzw, deBuren and the magician – which was a interest of public and critic.