Portfolio EN by Kamil Guenatri

Becoming The Way - residency for a cycle of durational performances. Atelier IPN,Toulouse, 2019.

Kamil Guenatri Portfolio

© Julien Alins

My body is manufacturing plant of poetry and actions.

Biography

Born on February 2, 1984 in Algeria. He lived in Algiers until the age of 17 and then moved to France (Toulouse) in order study mathematics and computer sciences. In 2007, he obtained a master's degree in computer systems engineering at the University Paul Sabatier. He worked in several companies as a software engineer.At the same time, he developed a passion for literature and performance art. In 2009, at the Mirail University of Toulouse, he enrolled in poetry studies, contemporary writing and performance art led by the French performer and poet Serge Pey. In 2011 he published his first collection of short stories "Deux ans, deux visions",by R.R Ecritures.

Since 2010, he has created and presented numerous actions in France, notably at the Fond Régional d'Art Contemporain - Les Abattoirs - in Toulouse. From 2014 to 2016, he also presents actions and works abroad, notably at the international platform "Month of Performance Art" in Berlin as well as in various international performance festivals in Spain, England, Portugal, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Canada and the United States. At the same time, he carries out a performance cycle in various galleries in Poland, including the National Art Gallery in Sopot, where a sculptural trace of an action is kept. In May 2016, he presents a series of photos from performances at the International Biennial of Performance in Bogota, Colombia. In 2019, he is a laureate with the DRAC Occitanie of the Individual Aid to Creation under a research project for long-lasting performances.

Kamil Guenatri also developed a performance teaching activity: between 2011 and 2013, at the University of Toulouse, in the poetry and performance studio and in 2013/2014, as part of arts education programs in high schoolsin South West France.

Moretti. La Muga Caula International performance and poetry festival. Les Escaules, Catalonia, 2015.

© Paco Justicia Cazorla

Corpulences. Performance and installation cycle. University Art Center of Toulouse, France, 2014 © Jérôme Carrié

General Statement

My practice is mainly oriented towards the exploration of the body in close relation with my physical disability. I develop it in the field of writing, performance and visual arts with philosophical or purely poetic forms. Through performance, I confront my almost inactive and dependent body with a medium based on action. With the help of my life assistants, privileged witnesses of my daily life, this paradox becomes a pretext to evoke the fragile frontier between impossibility and hope, immobility and movement, constraint and freedom.

Obviously, I also use the visible factor of my disability to transform the social representations linked to the disease, often associated with pain and suffering.Thus the body becomes a symbolic place of transfer of these memories in situations of desire.

I also feed my creations with a spirit of detour and deconstruction of physical spaces and socio-cultural contexts. But also as a dialectical expression in perpetual criticism towards its own foundation. The performance is for me the experience that allows this momentary detachment. A ritual time where the body becomes entirely language, devoid of all its organs.

Kamsel project-perform the other. Residency in collaboration with Marcel Sparmann. Chapelle St Jacques Art Center, Saint Gaudens, 2015.

© Lola Benardi

Moretti, Group exhibition AFTER. University Art Center of Toulouse, France, 2017 © Martine Viale

Selected performances

Coloris Corpus

Residencies

and explorations for performances cycle

Through color in objects, actions, and texts, I create, in various situations, sequences arranged in opposition/complementarity; making the body and color interact as both material and symbolic elements.The body merges and thus turns the lived experience with the public into an ornament of patterns. These explorations shift color from its usual framework of use. "Coloris Corpus" is developed as a bodying of color or a coloring of the body.

Events

-1- "En-dehors", group exhibition, Crac Occitanie, Sète (FR). 2024

-2- VIVA! art action, Union française, Montreal (CA). 2023

-3- "En remontant le temps",Within a Monography of Georges Ayats, La Fabrique - Jean Jaurès University, Toulouse (FR). 2022

-4- PEPA, Museo C.A.V la Neomudejar, Madrid (ES). 2022

-5- Galeria Ana Lama, Mercado Alvalade, Lisbon (PT). 2021

-5- © Stratos Ntontsis

-2-

© Manoushka Larouche

-1-

© Elise Ortiou Campion

-1-

© Elise Ortiou Campion

-1- © Elise Ortiou Campion

-3- © Jérôme Carrié

-4- © Analía Beltrán i Janés

"Machine à coudre"

Process presented during the residency-exhibition AFTER in 2017 (CIAM, Université Jean Jaurès) for which I was interested in the setting in situation of the body in correlation with the architectural potentialities of a space. And thus explore the possible links between the successions of actions and the traces they will constitute in the space, this through a reflection dedicated to the environment made available.

Events

- Prendre Corps #2. festival of performance. Museum les Abattoirs.Abbaye de Combelongue (FR). 2020

- Group exhibition AFTER. University art center of Toulouse (FR). 2017

-1- © Jérôme Carrié

Carrié

-2-© Guillaume Prouteau

"Moretti"

“Another kind of poem is written in the hours of dawn and dusk. In these in between moments, when the sun and the moon meet, and that consciousness gives way to the abyss of transcendance.Thus, lines of words spring as non nostalgic cries of memory, but first steps towards an emancipation of established patterns. From small revolutions to revolutions, ascents and digressions, abundances and crisis, the poems we act out shape our experience of the world by tumbling down a long arched staircase that extends into the sea.We are all refugees and we want to escape our internal borders, limits of our own conditioning. "

Through these performances, I pay tribute to Victor Hugo, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Bergèse, Marino Moretti and many other artists who have seized these moments of growth and decline. These actions do not reinterpret texts of these writers but are developed through the prism of the memories of a childhood in Algiers, with long afternoons spent at the beach.Thus, I use materials evoking marine landscapes such as elements of predominantly turquoise colors, the breeze carrying the sand, the sound of waves, fish and fruits of all kinds, old moored boats… These evocations of distant, approximate and randomised images tend, through immersion, to create a harmonious logic like the uncontrollable and fatal organization of the world and the stars. In this way, the significance of some anecdotes such as the annual celebration of the birthday of Iemanja,Yoruba goddess of the sea, are unveiled.

Events

-1- Accion!MAD17 international performance festival. Madrid (ES), 2017

-2- A PART international performance festival. Katowice (PL), 2017

-3- Les ateliers du vent art association. Rennes (FR), 2017

-4- City Art Gallery at Kalisz (PL), 2015

-5- La Muga Caula international performance festival. Les Escaules (ES), 2015

-6- Galeria Raczej. Poznan (PL), 2015

-5- ©Joan Casellas

-4-

© Adrian Kempa

-6- © Lukasz Trusewicz

-5- © Domix Garrido

-5- © Joan Casellas

-4- © Adrian Kempa

-1-

© Abel Loureda

-1-

© Joan Casellas

"Infini Equilibre"

The performance cycle: « Infini Equilibre » is inspired by Yves Klein's anthropometries. This action is an attempt to disappear through camouflage, using monochromatic canvases. It conveys ideas of extension, overlapping and multiplication of the body. This cycle makes a bridge from performance to installation, by leaving a trace, but also from installation to performance. I explore an indeterminate performative time in which the stillness of my body becomes an installation in of itself. Throughout the processes of the latest versions of this piece, I integrate nudity and colours, elements present in my current works.

Events

-4- AFIAC : Contemporary Art Association - Serviès (FR)2013

-1- MEM international experimental arts festival. Bilbao (ES), 2016

-2- Malamut international performance biennial. Ostrava (CZ), 2015

-3- University Art Center of Toulouse (FR), 2014

-3- ©Jérôme Carrié

-4- ©Patrick Tarres

-1- ©Txema Agiriano

-1- ©Anne Larcher

-1- © Txema Agiriano

-1-

©Anne Larcher

"Corpulences"

« Imagine the body like a puzzle, with, for example the nose where the knee should be, or the ankle instead of the mouth, toe instead of back, ribs instea of hair…

In this series of actions, I paint or photograph parts of my body that I hang in the exhibition space creating a new linguistic, corporal or pictorial form. In doing so, I confront a perfect symmetry on the wall with my body lying naked on the floor, transforming this ideal representation with parts of my body. I deconstruct physical standards and shine a light on the diversity and richness of our interior states. The scenography is conceived geometrically : using symmetry and juxtaposing the square photographs and paintings. The set up shows a vertical surface, the wall and the hanging, and a horizontal surface, the floor, where my naked body is, in order to taker pictures and prints.These two dimensions allow me to establish a transformation from physical body parts to a graphic structure on the wall. Creating these immaterial forms from parts of my body, marked by age and disease, allows me to show the paradox of this idealised representation and to open a field of possibilities as a singular, diversified memory.

Events

-2- Traverse Vidéo #18 experimental video meeting.Toulouse

-3- BIPOLAR international performance festival. Sopot (PL), 2015

-4- Blauvershiebung program at KUB Gallery. Leipzig (DE), 2015

-5- PERFLUX meeting at Serviès (FR), 2014

-1- PERFEX program at Galeria Raczej. Poznań (PL), 201

(FR), 2015

© Jurek Bartowski

-3- © Jurek Bartowski

-4- ©Thierry Baron x2

-2- ©Beatriz Matias

"10-14"

This poetic cycle is based on a random use of materials/actions used in my first performance in 2010. More than a retrospective and beyond each separate concept, the actions aim to define a more global process. By focusing on the spaces in which the succession of actions takes place, building bridges and connexions between past elements. I explore spontaneity and visceral energy to evoke the immanence of an action or a situation.

Events

- Tempting Failure international performance and noise art festival. London (UK), 201

- Le Nuage en Pentalon action poetry festival.Toulouse (FR), 2015

- "Corpulences" solo-exibition at University art center.Toulouse (FR), 2014

© Julia Bauer x2

© Julia Bauer

© Jérôme Carrié

© Kathleen Brunet

"Griffure"

Tatoo - Performance

Artifist Gallery (Pau) –5th December 2015

« Griffure » is a collaboration between Kamil Guenatri, performance artist, and Caroline Cottereau, tattoo artist.

This action took place simultaneously to Téléthon, event broadcasted on national television aiming to collect funds for scientific research in the fields of myopathies and neurological disease.

The performance turns the action of tattooing into a public action, during the television broadcasting. The numbers 3637, Telethon’s call in number for donations, is tattooed onto the performers arm, he himself being myopathic.

At a certain point in the year, just before Christmas, charities of all sorts seem to multiply.Although commendable, these campaigns depict and exhibit the sick to a lessened, tear jerking image. This initiative is a social, political but over all philosophical criticism of the notion of freedom of one ’ s body in different circumstances.

It is also, for the person receiving the tattoo, like for anybody with a tattoo, an act of memory and emotional attachment. Childhood memories, of parents listening to Claude Sérillon’severy word as he interviews diseased children’s families and doctors, in the unstoppable human search for a cure.

© Bonella Holloway

© Gaëtan Meuree

Selected exhibitions

About Installations

My installations question live creative actions and their visual traces. Two procedures can be identified in the corporal practice : performances that leave a trace behind, and the use of my body and objects in sculptural installations that are either immobile or suffer slight variations. In both cases, I experiment with different time scales. From this starting point of actions and of the body’s presence, I conceive appearances and absences by extending or by blending the ephemeral time scale of a perfomance, with the time of an exhibition in common acceptance.

Space is always used a context, with a particular interest for geometrical visualisation : symmetry of elements, centre of gravity, actions arranged in a specific trajectory, equivalency of vertical and horizontal. In these installations, of bodies and space, I establish a balance between my presence, the place of the action and the materials as to create an immersion in the work.The audience is integrated in the physical and sensorial space. The choice of rudimentary, perishable or degradable objects incorporates fragility to the installations.

Influenced simultaneously by action art and personal experience, my works whether ephemeral actions or installations evoke an aesthetic reflecting minimalism and ready made.Through my thoughts on the body and its presence I create installations that could be defined as « scénogravure », a mix between the scenography adapted to the body and the stillness of an image. In giving an importance to visual design of space and of objects, as well as to the design of the body’s experience, an aesthetic and a specific attention to existence are defined by my visual works.

After group exhibition at University art center of Toulouse, 2017. © Jérôme Carrié

© Jérôme Carrié

"En-dehors"

Group exhibition

CRAC Occitanie - Sète.

Artists : No Anger - Lou Chavepayre - Rémi Gendarme-Cerquetti - Kamil

Guenatri - Mélanie Joseph - Laurie Charles - Marguerite Maréchal -

Benoît Piéron

Curators : Lucie Camous and No Anger.

October 2024 - January 2025

The exhibition En-dehors invites eight contemporary artists who are directly affected by disability and/or illness to present works that reflect their experiences through the lens of emancipation.

Tragic existences, bodies or psyches irreparably suffering, bodies to be treated and corrected with a productivity-oriented goal this is how the ableist imagination depicts the experiences of those who are disabled and/or ill. Emerging from systemic oppression, it is based on a medical framework and its implicit norms. Cultural representations contribute to fueling oppression and discrimination by establishing a hegemonic imaginary that shapes our perceptions, thoughts, languages, and vice versa. How can we break free from this?

© Aurélien Môl

"After"

Group Exhibition

University Art Center of Toulouse - La Fabrique.

Curator: Jérôme Carrié.

November - December 201

Exhibition presented as part of Graphéine #9 - graphic arts festival of the Pinkpong network

Divided into four acts, AFTER proposes to follow the elaboration process of the exhibition through performative and participative meetings. During these festive evenings, the artists present the progress of their creations to the public. On the program of these after-works, performances, activations of works, experimental film-concerts...As a finissage of the exhibition and closing of the Graphéine festival, the artists present the last step of the exhibition. AFTER.

"Corpulences"

Solo exhibition

At University art center of Toulouse. Curated by Jérôme Carrié. January - February 2014

This performance-exhibition highlights the relationship between ephemeral action and a visual artistic trace. The show is built around a cycle of five performances and a work-in-progress installation of the traces left after each action. A selection of video-actions by the artist is projected throughout the exhibition, alongside a display of slogans written for the piece. .

© Jérôme Carrié x3

© Jérôme Carrié

"Autonomous Spaces"

Group exhibition

Durational Performance and Installation "Moretti"

At Les Ateliers du Vent, Rennes (Fr).

Artists : Aaron Williamson, Danielle Peers, Ju Gosling, Kamil Guenatri, Katherine Araniello, Lindsay M Eales, Liz Crow, Noemi Lakmaier.

Curated by Sarah Heussaff and Zig Blanquer.

May - June 2017

Autonomous Spaces is a group exhibition by various disabled artists questioning their identity through their disability and socio-cultural representations. Between activism, art and theory, between the exhibition space and the scenography itself, there is a boudary where public and private spheres blend into one : creating autonomous spaces. Now visible, these zones defy oppression as well as modalities of exhibiting, archiving and documenting.

This show inaugurates a field of various creative practices anchored in the Disability Arts movements.

© Antoine Meyer

"Keep the process warm "

Group exhibition

At Résidence du Fort, Montauban (Fr).

Artists : Neno Belcev, Zhou Bin, David Bonvin, Sandrine Deumier, BBB Johannes Deimling, Viktor Dimitrievitch, Rachel Echenberg, Emilie Franceschin, Andrès Galeano, Marc Giloux, Kamil Guenatri, Rolf Hinterecker, June Lancry, Liuba, Manuela Macco, Roberto Rossini, Guido Salvini, TouVa, Lucia Uni, Martine Viale, Johannes Zits

Curated by Marc Giloux.

July - Septembre 2016

"What happens before the show begins? This is what I asked the different artists of the exhibition.The answers are various : scripts, sketches, pieces of video clips or pictures, scores, etc. All are considered as embryos of Works in the making separated from their final context, but every artefact is captured or taken as an independent art piece. If we accept this premise, arises the next question: When exactly does a piece of something become a piece of art? When does its artistic nature begin and end? Where is the main issue? Is it in its achieved, published or archived form, or can it be in the heart of a relation, undetectable at first sight, somewhere that would not be spectacular, but coming from and asking for an intimate or hidden space? In other words, something non negotiable, that is not necessarily endorsed by artistic institutions! On this aspect, the incipit of the American artist Lee Lozano (1970) is still relevant : Win First Don’t Last Win Last Don’t Care."

"diálogo de granada"

Sketch for video-performance collaboration.Toulouse (FR) - 2016

"Corpulences"

Sketch for installation.Toulouse (FR) - 2014

"Corpulences"

Sketch for performance. Leipzig (DE) - 2014

"Resistencia"

V International Biennial of performance

Retrospective of photo-performances realised during "Corpulences" exibition (2014).

At El Validadero Artístico. Bogotá (CO)

Artists :Tales Frey (PT), Veronica Cohen (AR), Maria Mansur (BR), Pedro Galiza (BR), Oscar Salamanca (CO), Colectivo Madeirista (BR), Alda Ardemani (MX), Kouvaras Spyros (GR), Kamil Guenatri (FR), Alenjandro Zertuche (MX), Jefferson Skorupski (BR), Odette Fajardo (ES), Milena Olivella (CO), Ruth Vigueras Bravo (MX)

Curated by Fernando Pertuz.

May 2016

¨Body arts establish themselves as acts of resistance against control over life. But as Deleuze says, it is not Man himself that resists. It is life itself, it is the body as potential life that resists. Body arts appear on the border of war, Perhaps when words and representations of shapes are no longer enough, and that all expressive possibilities become necessary to experiment, to say the unsayable.¨

Selected collaborations

About collaborations

More than an aesthetic device, collaboration is obvious in my artistic practice because I am forced by my disability to delegate all daily acts. My work is inspired by a posture of contemplative presence that governs my days and creates a distanced perception of action. A simple gesture is thus of paramount fascination; an anatomical element without any use. It is no longer a person who changes a light bulb but the image of a hand that turns.The "I" made impossible by physical immobility, I compose with my collaborators to reach a new definition of individuation.

As with my life assistants, in collective creations this posture of absence is extended to my body which becomes a surface offered to the other.A blank sheet on which other performers, dancers, poets are invited to interact. This position questions the communication, on and withthe other, deploying a visual dynamic in constant tension between passivity and activity.

Also in my work with photographers or videographers, I tend to question the medium of performance and the possible modes of its representation.These forms associated with the action highlight the paradox between the ephemeral nature of performance and the permanency of photography and video.While I try to record the action in a physical frame, the collaborator orients the gesture of shooting towards a more temporary and performative dimension.

"Praxis - Art Action in Occitan region"

Collabortive performances with Emilie Francheschin, Martine Viale, Antoine Beres, Bonella Holloway, Gilivanka Kedzior, Edwige Mandrou. Toulouse (FR).

Since 2017

The group with variable geometry includes artists practicing action art* which tends to make visible the various forms of this medium and its multiple formats of diffusion. We want to create a research laboratory with times of meetings and formal and theoretical experimentation between the members of the group and with the public.

* art-action :Action - corporal or verbal - which takes place in a defined time and space with or without public.

The affirmation of the artistic character of this action by its author is what establishes it as such.

Spontanious training. French-Catalan border (ES).August 2020.

Equinox to Equinox. Esplanade des Mazades,Toulouse. September 2019.

Equinox to Equinox. Borderouge ,Toulouse. March 2019.

Equinox to Equinox Open Session. Perpignan. September 2020.

"Kamcel - Perform the other"

A collaborative performance project with Marcel Sparmann, and Lola Benardi

At Chapelle Saint Jacques Art Center and AFIAC Art Association. Saint-Gaudens/Fiac (FR).

Currated by Valérie Mazouin and Patrick Tarres. May 2015

The project ‘Kamcel’ born in 2014 from the encounter of two performance artists, with obviously different bodies, one disabled and the second nondisabled. Using this physical gap in performance situations, the two men discuss notions of limits and of communication between bodies : How can objects or actions be assimilated by others ? What is created in the space between ? The first idea of the project is to create a performance dialog where Kamil Guenatri’s imagination is embodied by Marcel Sparmann’s actions. Situations originate mostly in the rough books previously mentionned. These being vast and varied, performances are interpreted in different contexts: public/private, inside/outside, in turn/together… etc. From each situation is produced a photo performance and the collection is to form a book, as the final outcome of the project. The book will include the project’s statement with a page layout that will value the exchange between both bodies.

"A walk on my bones"

Performance and photographic collaboration

Since 2016

In these works I propose historical interpretations of still lifes or vanities in the form of long-term sculptural performances in which the body is inserted as a component of the installation.

This inanimate presence in relation to objects and perishable products such as meat or plants allows to mark in a direct way the existential and ephemeral character often symbolized in this style, following the example of certain representations of Paul Cézanne, Francisco De Goya or in the Dutch paintings of the XVIIth century.

The static settings of these performances led me to consider them for possible photographic representations thus highlighting the temporal link between the live unfolding of these actions and their pictorial imprints.This is how I initiated collaborations with photographers present at the events. The meeting of Manuel Vason in 2016 in London, led us to the realization of images created within the framework of a privileged exchange which tends to express new forms of instantaneousness in the photographic act by exploring symbolic and poetic bridges.

Process started at DARC Studio in London (2016) and at the Body and Freedom festival in Zürich (2018).

Presentation in group exhibitions: "Subjetividad, diversidad: Cuerpos" in Buenos Aires (2016), FRIDAY ISLAND -Freedom of the Body- in Luxembourg (2018).

"Noces

de vers "

"Noces de vers "

Collaboration withYann Marussich, choregrapher, performance artist.

2020-2022

"It's about a ritual. It could well be a wedding. A strange and improbable wedding. A wedding outside of society. A cruel wedding. A wedding out of time. A marriage of immobile bodies. A marriage of human beings. A marriage out of religion. An anti-social marriage. Between someone able-bodied and someone disabled. Between Yann Marussich and Kamil Guenatri. There is no pity to be had. Pity is a form of power over the other, by believing oneself superior to what is in front of us and that disturbs us. No one is superior.Yann Marussich

For Yann Marussich, immobility is an aesthetic choice: it has characterized his performances for over twenty years. Kamil Guenatri, on the other hand, did not choose it: because of an illness, he lost the use of his muscles. Immobility has thus become the starting point of his performances. The work resulting from their collaboration evokes the celebration of a strange and improbable marriage; the wedding of two immobile bodies in a kind of poetic ritual that the artists share with the public. "Noces de Vers" is a creation in the form of a triptych, each part is a performance in itself

Collaboration with Eva Baboulène, cinematographer, video artist.

2012-2017

To begin with, this audiovisual project was planned as a documentary on performance art, as it exists in my day to day life and personal practice. During the process, it seemed obvious that we needed to question presentation and representation modes related to cinema, poetry and visual arts. Using these questions as a starting point, we decided to create cinematographic images that would be used in a variation of installations and performances in a given space. These immersive spaces emerge as intimate spheres for the camera, the image and the public.

This work was presented in Toulouse at "Mix'art Myrys" residency and production space (2012), "Cave Poésie" theater (2014) and "Le Ring" theater of action (2017).

Contact

160, rue Edmond Rostand,appt 2

31200 Toulouse (FR)

guenatri kamil@yahoo.fr

http://laterrasse-artaction.fr/

0033 6 87 88 40 98