Oussama Tabti

Oussama Tabti (°1988) studied at the École Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Algiers in 2012 and at the École Supérieure d’art in Aix-en-Provence in 2017. In 2020, he completed a postgraduate degree at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. He was born in Algiers and lives and works in Brussels. His work casts a critical eye on international geopolitics, with hermetic borders and cultures isolating themselves. He questions a world that is globalised, but at the same time suspicious and fearful of what is foreign and different. He works with a wide variety of media: installation, audio, video and performance. His work has been shown at Le Biennale de Dakar, Salon de Montrouge, Centrale voor Hedendaagse kunst in Brussels, M HKA in Antwerp, Bozar in Brussels and is part of several collections such as MACBA in Barcelona, CNAP in Paris and private collections.

At Gallait 80, he prepared the exhibition Alien at the Centrale | Box (28/04 to 18/09/2022), about the photograph of an Algerian immigrant taken on Ellis Island in the early 20th century. At the same time, he was working on another project entitled Oh! I have to go now…, based on drawings of migrant and refugee children in Africa.

He also started an artistic research project, Plats de résistance, on the origins and history of different dishes from all corners of the world. Dishes that originated from scarcity or famine, to survive. In what socio-economic context did they originate and why do we still eat them?