Driss Ouadahi

Born in 1959, in Casablanca, Morocco, of Algerian parents, Driss Ouadahi grew up in Algeria. He studied at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Alger before enrolling and subsequently graduating from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.

His large formal landscapes are montages of spaces and places he knows, with human-scale details often omitted. His labyrinthine layering of planes creates space and perspective that is both familiar and confusing. The accuracy Ouadahi’s execution belies the fragility of the structures he paints. Ouadahi’s fences recall the wire-netting common in the metropolitan suburbs of France and Algeria. They delimit zones into which entrance is not permitted and demarcate privileged zones. Ouadahi’s underpasses are the most illusionistic and are based on actual subways in Germany.

Ouadahi’s work is in several public collections including Modern Forms, London, UK; FRAC Centre, Orléans, France; Herbert-Weisenburger-Stiftung, Rastatt, Germany; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany; Nadour Collection; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey; and Stadtsparkasse Baden-Baden, Germany.

Driss Ouadhi has won the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor Prize at the 11th edition of Dak’Art, the Biennial of Contemporary African Art in Dakar, Senegal in 2014.

Submitted by Lawrie Shabibi