Dear friends, please meet Mohamed Lekleti, a Moroccan artist who holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Aix-Marseille University. Based in Montpellier since 1987, Mohamed makes a regular appearance at international art fairs and various contemporary art salons worldwide including Art Paris, Drawing Now, Marrakech Art Fair, Slick, Art Elysée, Akaa, 1.54 London- Marrakech-New York and Volta Bâle.

In 2012, Mohamed won the Award of Contemporary Drawing Salon Chic Dessin in Paris, while exhibiting his artwork at the Belle Arti Palace in Torino, which became a point of reference in the field of contemporary drawing in France and Morocco a few years later. In 2013, he went on to investigate the Salses Fortress (French national heritage), where he questioned the dual concept of Territories and Borders. Selected in 2016 to participate in the Marrakech Biennial (Palm Museum), Mohamed further demonstrated a design series based on the Tarot card game at the Dominique Bagouet Art Space in Montpellier – an exhibition curated by Michel Enricci, art critic, former director of the Maeght Foundation and Van Gogh Foundation administrator in Arles.

Mathqaf: It’s great to meet you, Mohamed, could you tell us about your practice?
Mohamed: My work is to try unfolding and dismantling the world to rebuild it through innovative and complex assemblies that are modifying our perception. By drawing and using mixed techniques, I divert the chrono-photography process so dear to Étienne-Jules Marey’s or Eadweard Muybridge’s heart. By doing so, I analyse the movement of beings and things and emphasize this true moment that will let us explore the imperceptible and in front of which the eye may be blind. By using a series of hand-drawn images and by multiplying scattered pieces and parts of a still reconstructable truth, I try to introduce something undetermined that is generating a kind of tenuous and widespread discomfort.

Mathqaf: How do you work?
Mohamed: I use different approaches, following the reading of a poem, a tale, a legend, mythology or contemporary questions.

Mathqaf: What themes do you pursue?
Mohamed: Currently I am developing a work around the work of Farid al-Din Attar “The Conference of the Birds”.

Mathqaf: What is your dream project?
Mohamed: To direct a short-film.

Mathqaf: What do you do outside your practice?
Mohamed: I like to read and to travel.

Mathqaf: Lastly, why do you do what you do?
Mohamed: It is a way of putting myself in touch with others and with the world.

Check out Mohamed’s website here.

Mohammed’s portrait: courtesy of Philippe Bonan.