Salim Bayri (b. Casablanca, 1992; lives and works in Amsterdam) is a multimedia visual artist and polyglot whose practice spans sculpture, performance, drawing, coding, tech, and the virtual realm. Across his work, the slipperiness of linguistic, plastic and digital representations takes a central role. By adding tongues and making words strike each other in humorous, disorienting and often absurd ways, he hopes to find the particle-x in languages and thereby answer questions related to alienation and cultural violence. In keeping this hope alive, Bayri imagines a decolonial approach that lingers in the poetic possibilities of the happy accident, the unexpected crack, the unreachable dream.
Bayri holds a BA in Arts and Design from the Escola Massana (CAT) and a MA in Media, Art, Design and Technology from the Frank Mohr Institute (NL). 2019-21 he was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunst (NL); and in 2022 was awarded the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize and the Charlotte Köhler Prize. His work has been shown in art spaces and institutions such as W139 (Amsterdam), Motel Spatie (Arnhem), CODA Museum (Apeldoorn), Alyssa Davis Gallery (New York), ADN Gallery (Barcelona), Azkuna Zentroa (Bilbao), GVCC (Casablanca), Hot Wheels (Athens), and La Capella (Barcelona) among others. Bayri is half of the music duo BAZOGA and he is represented by Galerie van Gelder (Amsterdam), but he can often be found hanging out in obsolete online chatrooms where diasporas gather, and where strangeness, blasphemy, and “pulling each other’s legs” are common practices.
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Credits:
Website by Tayeb Bayri
Texts by Megan Hoetger as (MH)