Corona in the City

from left to right:

1. And some more here too, 2020.

I have memorised words and kept them in my chest. Since it happened, I can read them everywhere my eyes sit.

2. Cap, 2020.

Some geographies fit in my cap from bits and pieces I glean around. Some fall and break in sore shapes.

3. Guerreiro, 2020.

My childhood friend Amer Hdidou taking a nap between his two BJJ (brazilian jiu-jitsu) training sessions. He left Casablanca to become a professional “Guerreiro” (warrior), compete and grow personally. We left at the same time, it is beautiful to see how we diverge as much as we stay the same.

4. Flabby S-Links, 2020.

This is a sketch for my next S-Links installation. They usually are assemblages of little and bigger things I make on this 4x2x1 meters wooden structure that make a type of cartography about my curiosity of the moment (anxiety around legal documents, racist paranoia and different feelings of homesickness…)

This sketch was about a melted version. I haven’t built it.

5. Cheers, 2020.

I wonder if I am the ice cubes in some other people´s glass, while they discuss important decisions in their lives. As the night stretches, I melt.

6. Fisher-Price, 2020.

As the water bubbles and the heat goes up, puzzle smoke cycles through the tube. This is the new toy to ruminate on how things without a defined shape click together.

7. Autonomous players in a flat, smooth and endless grid, 2018.

8. Two people shake hands, 2019.

To what extent one has to suffer from other people’s decisions? Watching Adam Curtis’ documentary Bitter Lake I wondered about how much I am affected by the ripple effect caused by two men signing a pact in a remote lake in Afghanistan decades ago.

9. Ways out, 2019.

I am sitting opposite a cryptic ancient text when I could simply look at the bright sky through the window.

10. Puzzle, 2019.

At the Gemeente, a photo of a young couple is on the monitor staring at us. While I am waiting for my turn, I wonder how everyone in the room is fitting in.

Technique: Gouache, felt pen and pencil on 140 g / m2 paper. Dimensions: 21 x 14cm

Salim Bayri (1992) surrounds himself with an alter ego called Sad Ali, short for ‘sad alien’ or sad alien. This comic-like figure has no organs, takes no action, and unlike other cartoon characters, he doesn’t speak. He runs around like an ambulatory search engine and observes all situations.

In short, the work of Salim Bayri is about the moment that the eye jumps from one painting stone to another. When an attraction arises it is a matter of scanning, holding and making. In that sense, his art consists of a compilation of objects and stories that can be defined under different titles as a form of ‘storage’. Yet it is not just about this; in a recent installation he made called Sandwich break (2018), he sets the reality of artifacts (cardboard objects) against a moment from a documented film that becomes reality. He says, ‘I want to find out when a dead moment occurs. By showing this, I might find where the real action is taking place ‘.

Bayri is more analytical and contemplative in his lyrics. While writing he talks about situations in which he finds himself, while moving through the Netherlands. He currently combines film with stories about anything that strikes him. His films, drawings, prints and wearables stimulate people to think about semi-social political themes that he contextualizes in a softly absurd way.