Artworks

Younes Baba-Ali, born in 1986 in Oujda, lives and works in Brussels and Casablanca. He creates art that is unconventional, intelligent, and critical, often situated in public spaces or unexpected locations. He is a keen observer who poses pertinent questions to society, institutions, and particularly to his audience. As a free thinker, he holds a mirror to society, exposing its entrenched habits and dysfunctions. Baba-Ali’s work often presents itself as a readymade, but beneath this apparent simplicity lies a complex balancing act. Like an artist-alchemist, he carefully doses and combines technology, everyday objects, sound, video, and photography with political, social, and ecological issues. His art is always context-specific, taking its true form in dialogue with the audience. It is disruptive intervention art that, sometimes ironically, confronts the viewer with themselves and their environment. Baba-Ali presents people with dilemmas and taboos, challenging them to (re)act. In doing so, he makes them his accomplices in a covert artistic guerrilla that unites both the establishment and the ordinary person on the street. 

He graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg in 2008 and the Ecole Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence in 2011. He was awarded the Léopold Sédar Senghor Prize at the Dakar Biennale in 2012 and the Boghossian Prize at the Belgian Art’Contest in Brussels in 2014. He has participated in various international exhibitions and biennials, and his work is part of several collections, both private and public, such as Kanal - Centre Pompidou, Brussels and Mu.ZEE, Ostend.