Saȃdane Afif
Saâdane Afif’s installations, objects, concerts, and performances engage with works and events drawn from the histories of art, music, and poetry. His practice is defined by radical variability – indeed, a fluid passage – across media, disciplines, inspirations, and methods.
Afif’s practice draws on a rich network of collaborators from diverse fields, whose expertise and style is absorbed, rearticulated, and set into resonance with his oeuvre. In an ongoing project, Afif invites visual artists, musicians, and writers to produce poetic texts which he coined "lyrics." Playfully testing the boundaries of the conception of the artwork as a discrete, authorial object, Afif’s Lyrics' series invite the viewer into co-authorship, and thus questions our relationship with art as a collective experience.
For another critically acclaimed long-term project, The Fountain Archives, initiated in 2008, Afif systematically gathered magazines, catalogues, and books, that contain reproductions of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917). The project concluded in 2022 with a monumental installation devoted to the iconic readymade. This project exhibits Afif's characteristic skill to bring canonical artworks of art history into new contexts, where they appear in an unexpected light, touched by the artist's wide-ranging knowledge and unparalled sense of humor.
Selected solo exhibitions include: Five Preludes, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin (2025); The Pavilion of the Eternity, 15th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2024); The Fountain Archives and Beyond…, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2021); The Fountain Archives, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2019); This is Ornamental, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Vienna (2018); Paroles, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (2018); Ici., Leopold-Hoesch Museum, Düren (2017); Là-bas., La Panacée, Montpellier (2017), The Fountain Archives, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris (2017); Quoi ? – L’Eternité., Atelier Hermès, Seoul (2016); Das Ende der Welt. Kunst/Natur. Artistic Interventions Round I, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Berlin (2015); Là-bas., Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus (2014); Blue Time, Blue Time, Blue Time..., Institut d‘Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, (2013); Anthologie de l’humour noir, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2012); The Fairytale Recordings, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2011); A Lecture, A Recording & Few Witnesses, Oficina para Proyectos de Arte, Guadalajara (2010); Anthologie de l’humour noir, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010); Feedback, Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Castelló (2009); ONE, FRAC Pays de la Loire, Carquefou (2008); TWO..., FRAC Basse-Normandie, Caen (2008); Technical Specifications, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2008); Power Chords, Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco, Monaco (2006); Lyrics, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005), and Melancholic Beat, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2004).
Selected group exhibitions include: Shifting the Silence. Die Stille verschieben, Lenbachhaus, Munich (2025); Yes to All. The Gift of Paul Maenz and Gerd de Vries to the Kupferstichkabinett, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (2025); Érosion du réel, (En)quête de sens, Église des Célestins, Avignon (2025); Dreams of an Owl, Who the Baer and the Wounded Planet, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld (2024); Pansori, A Soundscape of the 21st Century, 15th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2024); Lacan, l'exposition: Quand l'art rencontre la psychanalyse, Centre Pompidou, Metz (2024); Ridiculously Yours! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm, Neue Galerie, Graz (2023); Elmgreen & Dragset: READ, Kunsthalle Praha, Prague (2023); Yasmine and the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron, Bergen Assembly 2022, Bergen (2022); Intertwingled. The role of the Rug in Arts, Crafts and Design, Galeria Nazionale, Rome (2022); Broken Music Vol. 2, 70 Years of Records and Sound Works by Artists, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2022); Ridiculously Yours! Art, Awkwardness and Enthusiasm, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Bonn (2022); Flags, Boghossian Foundation, Brussels (2022); Life on Planet Orsimanirana, Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe, Hamburg (2021); Paris-Londres, Musée national de l´Histoire de l´Immigration, Paris (2019); You: Oeuvres de la collection Lafayette Anticipations, Musée d´Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2019); Der Traum der Bibliothek, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Siegen (2019); Konkrete Gegenwart, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2019); RE-SET, Museum Tinguely, Basel (2018); Nischenhain, Simultanhalle Cologne, Cologne (2017); L’esprit du Bauhaus, l’objet en question, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris (2016); Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future, 10th Taipei Biennial, Taipei (2016); All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015); Individual Stories. Collecting as Portrait and Methodology, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2015); Top Hundred, Museion, Bolzano (2015); La Triennale de Vendôme, Musée de Vendôme, Vendôme (2015); Doable Sayable Thinkable, 8th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2014); Re:emerge Towards a New Cultural Cartography, 11th Sharjah Biennial (2013); Made in Germany 2 - International Art in Germany, Sprengel Museum, Kestnergesellschaft and Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover (2012); Beyond Words, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2012); French Window: Contemporary French Art Scene / Seen through the Marcel Duchamp Prize, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2011); Inquiétantes étrangetés, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Nantes (2011); La Carte d’après Nature. An Artist’s Selection by Thomas Demand, Villa Paloma, Monaco (2010); Exhibition of the artists nominated for the 2009 Marcel Duchamp Prize, FIAC, Cour Carré du Louvre, Paris (2009); The history of a decade that has not been named yet, 9th Lyon Biennial, Lyon (2007); Down at the Rock’n Roll Club, 1st Moscow Biennale, Moscow (2005), and Playlist, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004).
His work is held in the following collections: Centre Pompidou, Paris; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France; FRAC Corse, Corte; FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon; FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris; FRAC Rhône-Alpes, Villeurbanne; FRAC Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans; FRAC Sud – Cité de l’art contemporain, Marseille; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Musée Jenisch Vevey, Vevey; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau München, Munich.