Biography

Born in 1986 in Tunisia, she lives and works both in Tunis and Paris. In her work on paper, Yesmine Ben Kehlil reappropriates images she has found on the internet: old photographs, books or archive documents and incorporates them into drawings done with felt tip pens, pencils, ink and gli er paint. In J’ai tenu parole (2015), a series based on a propaganda document published by the Tunisian government in 1963, the artist establishes an ironic relationship between the past and present of her country. Using superposition, the drawings can be seen through the depth of the book’s pages. A poetic montage of the images of yesteryear with those of today enables the artist to raise the issue of the rewriting of history and the representation of reality in a world transformed by the constant ow of information.

Yesmine Ben Khelil received a degree in Plastic Arts and Sciences of Art from the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. She participated in Réenchantements, the main exhibition of the 12th Dakar Biennale (2016), as well as in a collective exhibition at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris (2016).

Yesmine Ben Khelil’s work explores, develops and captures a world of speculative beings mined from internet searches and stock imagery. So-called characters are then immortalised in ink, pencil or pastel portraits, a process which serves to question the reality or truth of their derivative image. These drawings are often placed against or into old literary editions, challenging the schemata of the book.

Ben Khelil received a master’s degree in Plastic Arts and Sciences of Art from Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris. Solo exhibitions include History of Haunting, Escalier B, Bordeaux (2016) and The Universe is Expanding, Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis (2016). Works have been presented at Nanjing International Art Festival, Baijia Lake Museum, Nanjing (2016); Dak’Art – Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain, Dakar (2016) and Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris (2016).