Abdessamad El Montassir is a Morocco-born artist based between Boujdour, Western Sahara, and Eastern France. After graduating from Institut National des Beaux-Arts Tétouan and Ecole Normale Supérieure Meknès, he was an associate fellow at IMéRA – Institute for Advanced Study in Marseille from 2017 to 2020. 

El Montassir’s work is deeply rooted in the Sahara, where he explores the desert with a sense of boundless freedom and imagination. His art is a form of research and investigation into the intangible, giving shape to silences and texture to mutism. As a historian without archives, he navigates the great outdoors like an explorer and tracks the essence of territories. El Montassir’s work is akin to an anthology of poems, a scientific novel, and a medium of transmission. At the same time, he emphasizes the role of plants and non-human elements in shaping and influencing the world.

As of August 2024