Part archive and part archaeological experiment, Mounir Fatmi’s work draws on his early experiences of a flea market in Tangier. Using defunct antenna cables, typewriters, and VHS tapes, he exploits the infinite lifespan of technology and consumer goods to question the limits of memory and communication. Assembled in arrangements that twist the hegemonic systems of architecture, language, and machine—systems that separately and together encode our lives—his sculptures and installations reveal the instability behind a façade of permanence. Exposing the fragile reality of these systems and reducing them to residue, Fatmi offers a glimpse what might lie beyond their illusions.
Robert Preece: You recently showed Skyline (2007) and The Monuments (2008–09) at the 2026 Chengdu Biennial, “Pulse of Life.” Skyline is made with VHS tapes, and The Monuments consists of 175 porcelain hardhats inscribed with the names of influential Western thinkers whose “theories, systems, critiques, and ideological structures” have, as you say, built the contemporary world. How did you choose these installations, and what is the connection between them?
Mounir Fatmi: The selection was made in close collaboration with curator Guillaume de Sardes. The two works naturally complement each other. I was particularly keen to show Skyline, because it questions architecture as a space of protection and intimacy. The VHS tapes evoke what is hidden and protected, much like the interior of a building. The work also points to the fragility of architecture, something that was tragically revealed on 9/11.
RP: When you were growing up in Tangier, you spent a considerable amount of time at a flea market, where your mother sold children’s clothes. How did that time affect your approach to making art?
MF: I have always said that the Casabarata flea market, where I was born, was my first art school. That’s where I learned everything. For me, this market felt like a museum in ruins, with broken televisions, radios, piles of shoes, all kinds of cables, vegetables, maps—in short, objects at the end of their lifecycle. I was especially fascinated by anything related to electronics. I also learned how to look at and observe the rhythm of the market: when it was crowded, when it was empty, and the moment when new goods arrived. I understood very early on that I was a key part of my mother’s strategy for selling children’s clothes, since I wore the same designs she sold, made by my older sister on a sewing machine. Later, I realized that to understand the world, you need to be able to take the pulse of both financial markets and flea markets.
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RP: What is conveyed by the fluorescent tube lights that make up In the absence of evidence to the contrary 05 (2012)?
MF: Materials drawn from the industrial and professional world, the fluorescent tubes question how light can function simultaneously as a tool of revelation and manipulation. The installation unfolds as an architectural, almost organic structure —somewhere between roots and a trunk—and transforms the exhibition space into an immersive environment. Inscribed on the luminous tubes, in both Arabic and English, are verses from the Qur’anic surah “The Light.” Here, light becomes the only possible mode of presence for a God who cannot be represented. Yet this light, when too intense, ultimately becomes blinding. Viewers are drawn in, almost hypnotized, and then placed in a position of uncertainty by what they see—or believe they see.
By using materials associated with industry and Minimalism, I divert their original function to create a visual and mental trap. The work questions our relationship to belief, to the authority of text, and to the trust we place in what is visible. In the absence of evidence to the contrary 05 ultimately poses a simple but essential question: To what extent should we believe what we see?
This logic of the visual and perceptual trap also runs through Mehr Licht! (2009–11) and The Index and the Machine (2016). In Mehr Licht!, ordinary photocopiers emit a blinding light through neon tubes, transforming an administrative tool of reproduction into a machine incapable of producing images. The installation seduces through its luminous beauty, yet defeats any attempt at immediate understanding, reminding us that light not only illuminates, but can also blind. Similarly, The Index and the Machine interrogates the role of technologies—from the printing press on—to disseminate or censor knowledge, by revealing their fundamental ambivalence. These works also function as aesthetic traps: they first attract through form, then force the viewer to adopt a critical distance toward images, texts, and the systems of power they convey.
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RP: Could you explain a bit about The White Matter (2019)? Does this small sculpture bring you back to your childhood dreams in Tangier? What memories do you see in this piece?
MF: The White Matter may be small, but it says a lot. It takes me straight back to my earliest works, to a very intuitive way of working with simple, salvaged materials connected to the technical or industrial world. It also brings me back to my childhood in Tangier, to that very direct relationship with cables, machines, and dismantled objects—things you handle without always fully understanding how they work. Some of my childhood dreams came true. Others turned into questions. I think that’s what keeps me wanting to continue working.
For me, the sculpture functions as a metaphor for the contemporary brain, saturated with networks and information, where the human and the machine become entangled. Above all, it reminds us that in the face of technological acceleration, our understanding of the world remains fragile and always incomplete.
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