أحمد الكرموني
© Stefano Marchionini
Ahmad Karmouni is a visual artist born in 1994 in Assilah, Morocco. His practice explores the relationship between raw materials and the intangible, seeking to uncover new artistic possibilities rooted in fleeting emotion. He approaches his work as a scientific process, examining the unpredictable nature of matter and its transformations over time. His experimentation spans various media, including installation, drawing, and printmaking techniques.
Karmouni has participated in many residencies and exhibitions, including at the Palais de Tokyo (FR), Fræme (FR), Triangle-Astérides (FR), Fondation FIMINCO (FR), Mahal Art Space (MA), Caravane Tighmert (MA), MAC.A (MA), Jeune Création (FR), Goethe-Institut (MA), Tanger Print Club (MA), LE 18 Marrakech (MA), and GVCC (MA).
In 2020, he co-founded Mouhawalat (Arabic for “Attempts”), an artistic collective dedicated to exploring alternative modes of creation and transmission through a process driven by ongoing experimentation and trial.
French Bio
Ahmad Karmouni est un artiste visuel né en 1994 à Assilah, Maroc. Son travail manifeste une volonté de créer une analogie entre la matière brute et le champ du sensible et de l’immatériel afin de découvrir de nouvelles possibilités plastiques liées à l’émotion éphémère. L’artiste se perçoit dans un processus scientifique où il explore le caractère improbable de la matière et ses différentes réactions et transformations dans le temps. Son champ d’expérimentation touche à plusieurs médiums dont l’installation, le dessin et les techniques d’impression.
Il a participé à diverses résidences et expositions telles que Palais de Tokyo (FR), Fræme (FR), Triangle-Astérides (FR), Fondation FIMINCO (FR), Mahal Art Space, (MA) Caravane Tighmert (MA), MAC.A (MA), Jeune Création (FR), Goethe Institute (MA), Tanger Print Club (MA), LE 18 Marrakech (MA), GVCC (MA).
En 2020, Ahmad a co-fondé «Mouhawalat» (“Tentatives” en Arabe classique), un collectif d’artistes qui vise à imaginer des moyens alternatifs de création et de transmission, à travers un processus basé sur les essais et les tentatives constantes.
Driving along the road between Tangier and Assilah, a dazzling white landscape of salt marshes emerges along the coastline. This play of reflections between earth and sky gives these shimmering salt flats the appearance of dimension-makers. These human-made landscapes are ones I’ve felt connected to since childhood. My fascination with salt has led me to extensive research, tracing its journey through history, religious symbolism, and trade. Every civilization has developed its own relationship with salt, imbuing it with layered meanings. It has been a symbol of alliance, purification, or protection against evil spirits. Salt, though often overlooked today, continues to evolve in how it exists and captivates. A pinch may go unnoticed, but a mountain of it commands awe. Its form is both sturdy and delicate, shaped by its environment and interactions.
During my years at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan, I began actively exploring this material and its many forms. In the studio, I experimented with different ways of working with salt — a medium that’s as unpredictable as it is expressive. Its dual nature, both fragile and resilient, challenged me to constantly adapt to its ever-shifting properties. This unpredictability awakened my desire to explore salt’s material and immaterial potential alike. I examined its symbolic, historical, and global dimensions, but also looked closer, at its chemical composition and the crystalline structures it forms.
Later, during a residency at the FIMINCO Foundation in Paris, I sought to expand my practice further, but encountered an unexpected challenge: accessing raw salt, specifically halite. Although abundant in Morocco, it proved hard to source in Paris. Unable to collect sea salt, I turned instead to a more intimate source : the human body. More precisely human tears.
I invited volunteers to collect their tears in small vials. Initially, the idea was to extract salt from them. But as the process unfolded, another layer revealed itself, one charged with emotional and symbolic depth. Tears are not just saline; they are also saturated with energy, often tied to the themes I explore in my work: the uncontrollable, the purifying, the liminal. This led me to approach salt not just as a historic or geographic element, but as an emotional material, one capable of archiving fleeting psychological states.
Like emotional archives captured before evaporating, my research began to center on the spiritual and ritualistic dimensions of tears themselves. I became interested in their potential as material traces of moments too subtle or too intense to express in words. I now see tears as a kind of purgation — the release of the unsaid, the unbearable, the internal. This process marks a shift in my practice, from working with raw material to delving into the realm of the intangible and affective, building bridges between the material and the emotional.Currently, I’m focusing on the phenomenon of professional mourners (“cryers”) at funerary rituals, exploring how they embody and give form to grief through their performances. The act of crying, its spontaneity or restraint, led me to this singular figure.
Though now marginal, this ancestral practice still exists in parts of the Maghreb. It has become a symbolic anchor for my work, raising questions around how grief is ritualized, and what inner state is needed to perform it. How much is genuine emotion, and how much is discipline, or even dissociation? What does it mean to embody grief repeatedly? And what can this tell us about our collective relationship to emotion?
These questions underpin my current project Lambout, a word meaning “funnel” in northern Morocco and also evoking the Greco-Roman lacrimarium, a small vessel once used to collect the tears of mourners at funerals. Lambout seeks to make the invisible visible, capturing traces of emotion shaped by memory, culture, and ritual, and reflecting on contemporary ways of transmitting affect. This material curiosity continues to guide my artistic research through various media, including drawing, printmaking, glass, and ceramics.
AHMAD KARMOUNI
Born 1994, Assilah, MoroccoLives and works between Morocco and France
EDUCATION
2019 Fine Arts Diploma, National Institute of Fine Arts, Tetouan, Morocco
RESIDENCES
2024/2025 Artagon Residency Marseille «Mouhawalat Collective» Artagon Marseille, France
2024 La Friche Residency - Palais de Tokyo «Mouhawalat Collective» Palais de Tokyo - Paris, France
2023 Triangle-Astérides Residency «Mouhawalat Collective» Marseille, France
2022 Méditerranée Friche la belle de mai Residency Marseille, France
2021/2022 Fiminco Foundation Residency, Fiminco Foundation, Paris-Romainville, France
2021 Artistic residency as part of the «Wach hadi tji f salon» project, Mouhawalat Collective, a project supported by Mophradat
Self-organization program, Rabat, Fes, Tanger, Morocco
2020 Mahali Project 1st edition, Mahali Art Space, Tangier, Morocco
2019 Tighmert Caravan 5th edition, Tighmert Caravan, Tighmert, Morocco
MAC.A , Museum of Contemporary Art, Assilah-Briech, Morocco
BOURSES
2024 DRAC - Creation Grant, France
2023 Wijhat - Mobility Grant, Culture Resource, as «Collectif Mouhawalat» Culture Resource, Beirut
2022 Grants for Artists Practice, Mophradat, as «Collectif Mouhawalat» Mophradat, Belgium
2020 Self-Organizations, Mophradat, as «Collectif Mouhawalat», Mophradat, Belgium
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022 PLEINS FEUX #2 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE EXHIBITION, Fiminco Foundation, Paris-Romainville, France
Curated by Yomna Osman
2021 Tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow… Jeune Création, Fiminco Foundation, Paris-Romainville, France “Ma3red / 3rada - “Mouhawala 01: “Wach Hadi Tji Mzyana f Salon?” Mahal Art Space & Mouhawalat Collective, Tangier, Morocco Taiwan Annual Grand Exhibition - «What Dies Last» Taiwan Visual Arts Association & Mahal Art Space, Tangier, Morocco Taiwan Annual Grand Exhibition - «What Dies Last», Taiwan Visual Arts Association & Mahal Art Space - Virtual Exhibition Exhibition on the theme of migration - research - Geothe Institut Maroc, Rabat, Morocco
2020 Out of the Blue Map, Mahal Art Space, Tangier, Morocco
2019 Kissaria Print Club, Kissiaria Workshop, Tangier, Morocco
Return of Tighmert,18, Marrakech, Morocco
2018 Mastermind 7, Prestigia Luxury Homes, Casablanca, Morocco
2017 Moroccan Drawing and Printmaking Fair, Chaabia Gallery, El Jadida, Morocco
EXPERIENCE
2020 Co-founder of «Collectif Mouhawalat» Morocco
2022 Workshop with a CM1 class from the Montaigne school in Sevran, Fiminco Foundation, Paris-Romainville, France
2019 Photography workshop led by photographer and videographer Nicol Vizioli, Mahal Art Space, Tangier, Morocco Invisible Pedagogies - Méta skholé III - led by artist Jean Paul Thibeau, Mahal Art Space, Tangier, MoroccoHead of the Screen Printing Department - Kissaria Print Club, Kissiaria Workshop, Tangier, Morocco
2018 «Research and Production» workshop, led by artist Mustapha Akrim, National Institute of Fine Arts, Tetouan, Morocco «Research and Production» workshop, led by artist Mohssin Harraki, National Institute of Fine Arts, Tetouan, Morocco Workshop «Conceptual Art,» supervised by artist Younes Rahmoun, National Institute of Fine Arts, Tetouan, Morocco «Perceptions» Workshop, supervised by artist Jean Paul Thibeau, National Institute of Fine Arts, Tetouan, Morocco «Contemporary Art in Public Space» Workshop, supervised by architect Carlos Perez Marin, National Institute of Fine Arts, Tetouan, Morocco
2017 «Remote Words» Workshop Supervised by Joachem Heufelder and Madiha Sebbani Workshop on Restoration of Works Supervised by the Reina Sofia National Museum Workshop on the theme of «Contemporary Suspensions» Supervised by artist Hassan Echair
PRESS
2023 Diptyk #64 «INCUBATOR» Morocco
2022 THE MAGAZINE N: 02 - FIMINCO Foundation, France
2020 Out.of.the.blue.map. CALYPSO36°21 collective, Morocco - France
Résidence Fondation Fiminco
Residence
2021-2022
Fondation Fiminco, Paris ,France
Grants for Artists Practice, Mophradat
Bourse
2022
« Collectif Mouhawalat »
Mophradat, Belgique
Migration - Recherches
Exposition
17 May - 4 June 2021
.Curated by Nouha Ben Yebdri
Goethe Institut Marokko - Rabat - Morocco
Wach atji mzyana f salon
Residence
2021
mohawalate Rabat, fes, Tanger, Morocco
Self-organization
Bourse
2020
Curated by CALYPSO36°21 collective
Mahal Art Space, Tanger-Morocco
Collective
2020
Morocco
Out.of.the.blue.map
EXHIBITION
12/11/2020
12/12/2020
Curated by CALYPSO36°21 collective
Mahal Art Space, Tanger-Morocco
Project Mahali
Artist Residency
2020
Mahal Art Space, Tanger-Morocco
Retour de Tighmert
EXHIBITION
22/07/201929/09/2019
tanger print club, Tanger-Morocco
Retour de Tighmert
Restitution - Expo
17avril 2019
LE 18 MARRAKECH, Tighmert, Morocco
Recherches - Atelier Inba-Cergy
06 - 18avril 2019
Artist Residency
carlos perez marin
Tighmert Caravan, Tighmert, Morocco
Fondation
MAC.A
Recherche residency
2019
Artist Residency
invitation par Ahlam Lemseffer
MAC.A, Briech - Assilah - tanger - Maroc
Mastermind 6
03 – 08 Apr 2018
Curated by Madiha Sebhani
Galerie Venise Cadre Anfa (GVCC),