Inès Benaissa
Acrylic painting, mixed media, collage — the body, memory, Amazigh heritage
Information
Based in
Dubai, UAE
Status
Avanvue selection
Medium
Acrylic painting · Mixed media
Overview
Inès Benaissa has been painting for over twenty years. Her work has taken shape in the space between two cultures, French and Algerian, and in the tension between what we inherit and what we choose. The human figure is at the center of it all: broken-up faces, fragmented bodies, presences that are both recognizable and strange. The line is thick, the black outlines almost always present, the colors sharp.
Her practice is organized into distinct series, each addressing a specific question. In her figurative paintings, she explores the relationships between bodies, desire, tension, solitude, and coexistence. In the Roots series, she draws on Amazigh heritage: Tifinagh symbols, collaged antique papers, and earth tones. Collage plays a central role in this work. It is integrated into the painting through traces of reality, documents, and fragments that once existed elsewhere.
What unites all these series is an economy of means in the composition, a directness of gesture, and a deliberate choice not to explain what should remain open. The black line does not set boundaries, but it questions.
My view
I chose her in May 2026.
In Inès's work, sign-bodies from far away, the Tifinagh script, Berber memory, carried by colors that are resolutely alive, joyful even. Origins are not a burden: they are a source. I've known Inès for a long time. I only recently learned that she paints.
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Every two weeks, I write a letter about the art I truly look at. Not the art we are necessarily told to love. Simply a slower, more personal, and freer way of looking at contemporary art. Three regular features. The Selection: I present an artist. Everyday Uncommon: my eye, the exhibitions I see, and what I find in them. Behind the Scenes: I talk about Avanvue, its projects, its choices, its philosophy.