Mustapha Azeroual
Born in 1979 in Morocco
Lives and works in Marseille
Mustapha Azeroual is a self-taught photographer. Trained as a scientist, his research focuses on observing the processes through which images emerge and on experimenting with photographic materials. Combining installation, volume, and sequence with early photographic processes, he revitalizes historical techniques of image capture and printing while expanding the field of photographic investigation beyond its presumed limits (flatness and temporality).
The question of the photographic and the materiality of the image lies at the heart of his creative process. Mustapha Azeroual has been represented by Galerie Binome (Paris) since 2013, and his works are also featured by Cultures Interfaces (Morocco) and Mariane Ibrahim Gallery (United States).
He has participated in major international art fairs such as AIPAD New York (2017), Art Paris (2016–17), Paris Photo (2016–19), Cape Town Art Fair (2016), 1:54 New York (2016), and Art Dubai (2013). In 2017, Azeroual developed the ELLIOS project — a study of light — in partnership with the Paris-Meudon Observatory’s LESIA (Laboratory for Space Studies and Astrophysics Instrumentation), continuing his research between France and Morocco. A permanent resident at La Capsule, the photographic creation center in Le Bourget (Réseau Diagonal), he also joined the Fresh Winds residency (2015) as part of the Contemporary Art Biennale in Gardur, Iceland. L’arbre et le photographe (The Tree and the Photographer), featuring his Résurgence series, was his first major exhibition in 2011 at ENSBA in Paris.
In 2015, he participated in the exhibition L’arbre, le bois, la forêt at CAC Meymac and presented Radiance #2 at the first Biennale of Contemporary Arab World Photographers (Institut du Monde Arabe – Maison Européenne de la Photographie). In 2017, following his residency at LESIA, he presented The Third Image with Syrian artist Sara Naim at the second edition of the Biennale, an immersive video-based installation composed of holograms and reflective devices that drew on the Observatory’s archives.
His latest experiments explore new modes of image production. In 2017, he produced his first video work, Contact Aveugle (Blind Contact) — the destruction of a video sensor by laser — in collaboration with a researcher from the CEA. In 2019, he designed Solar Printer, a quintessentially photographic device that produces images using solar energy, controlled by an Arduino electronic board.
In 2018, he was a finalist for the Camera Clara Prize and participated in international exhibitions such as Africa is No Island (MACAAL – Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden), J’emporterai le feu (Jaou, Tunis), and Akal (CDG Foundation, Rabat).
In 2019, he took part in the exhibitions SCIENCE Fiction at the Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie and L’œil et la nuit at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris.
From early 2019 and for two years, he was invited to join Supplementary Elements, an art–science program initiated by the University of Strasbourg and curator Emeline Dufrennoy. Through this program, he actively collaborated with several Strasbourg laboratories (CNRS, ICube, IPCMS, ICS, among others).
At the end of 2019, curator Mouna Mekouar invited him to the Institut Français in Beijing to present his solo exhibition Turbulence, where he explored for the first time the performative dimension of photographic production.
His works are part of public and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou, the Musée Français de la Photographie (Bièvres), the JP Morgan Collection, MACAAL (Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden), and the CDG Foundation (Morocco).