“My work begins with the body, its memory and its capacity to move through time. I seek to transform images, narratives and inherited forms of violence without reproducing them frontally, in order to bring forth other forms of presence and dignity. Painting, textile and performance allow me to connect the intimate with the collective, history with gesture, African memories with contemporary imaginaries. Through these forms, I attempt to make long-marginalised presences visible and to open a shared space.”
Dalila Dalléas Bouzar
Born in Oran, Algeria
Lives and works in Bordeaux, France
Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, born in 1974 in Oran, Algeria, lives and works in Bordeaux. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, she develops a practice spanning painting, drawing, performance and textile art. Her work questions the representation of bodies, faces and identities, placing the human figure at the centre of a reflection on memory, relations of domination, colonial legacies and African narratives.
Her painting, often frontal and intensely coloured, brings together figuration, imagination and a critique of systems of representation. Through portraiture, textile and performance, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar explores the links between personal memory, collective history and transmission, reinscribing within the visible field figures and narratives that have long been marginalised.
Her work has been presented in numerous institutions and international exhibitions, including the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris; Le Nouveau Printemps in Toulouse, in a programme conceived by Rossy de Palma; the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris with Nos jeunesses; Louvre-Lens with Par-delà les Mille et Une Nuits; the Centre d’art de Lormont; the Centre de la Vieille Charité in Marseille with Tatouages. Histoires de la Méditerranée; the Musée de Pont-Aven with Sorcières; the Maison des arts de Bagneux with Pour en découdre, tissons des liens; Fondation H in Madagascar with Memoria, récits d’une autre histoire; and the Heidelberg Kunstverein in Germany with Sex Reenchanted.
She has also presented her work at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris with Vaisseau Infini as part of the SAM Prize for Contemporary Art in 2023; at MO.CO. Montpellier in Immortelle; at the FRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA; at the Maison des arts, centre d’art contemporain de Malakoff; at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac; at the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar; at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan; and at Tate Modern in London. She also participated in the Dakar Biennale, notably in 2024 with The Wake, curated by Salimata Diop.
Dalila Dalléas Bouzar was awarded the SAM Prize for Contemporary Art in 2021, the L’art est vivant support at Art Paris Art Fair in 2017, the Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt programme in Berlin in 2013, and the Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet pour la Vocation award in 2003. Her works are held in several collections, including the Mohammed VI Museum, the World Bank Foundation, the Lazaar Foundation, the L’art est vivant endowment fund and the Museum Staro Selo.