Hassan Bourkia

Hassan Bourkia was born in 1956 in El Ksiba and lives and works in Marrakech. He is a writer and translator as well as a visual artist, and has taught literature since 1982. His work takes the form of installations, assemblages and mixed media panels: shelves of grey books, old telephones and radios, burnt letterboxes and rusted metal, dusted with ash and earth.

Largely self-taught as a painter, he built his canvases from sand, earth, henna and resin in greys, browns and white. He later gave up pigment and colour, keeping only grey, and turned to dust, ash and found objects. Exodus Library (2019) was a book installation made for the Immigrants' Hotel in Buenos Aires, and La Mémoire des indésirables (2020) measures four metres across.

Bourkia showed Exodus Library at Bienalsur in 2019 and had a solo show at Galeria Karla Osorio in Brasília the same year. Au nom des miens opened at Comptoir des Mines Galerie in 2020, and Distance Ardente at MRAC Occitanie in Sérignan included his work in 2021. He received the Prix Grand Atlas in 2004 for translating Edmond Amran El Maleh. His work is held by the Musée Mohammed VI d'Art Moderne et Contemporain and Bank Al-Maghrib in Rabat.