Born in Marrakech, Anissa Boukili El Hassani is a Moroccan-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and poet based in Tio’Tia:ke (Montreal).
She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University and a DCS in Visual Arts. She is currently completing an undergraduate certificate in Computers and Information Technology from McGill University.
Artist Statement
Anissa Boukili El Hassani draws from her experience as an immigrant, perpetually torn between opposing cultures. Guided by an interdisciplinary methodology that converges art, technology, and critical thinking, she seeks to challenge existing norms by exploring social change and interculturality. Her artistic practice revolves around the concepts of decolonization, reappropriation, introspective reflection and repair. The plurality of identities and fragmentation serve as her primary sources of inspiration, leading to her goal: the democratization of conceptual art through an intersectional perspective. Thus, she aims to bridge extremes to paint a picture of the complexity of social, economic, cultural, environmental and historical relationships governed within the capitalist system.
Through a symbiosis of materials, techniques and disciplines, she conjures a subtle interplay between reality and artifice. Her main mediums include installation, electronic art, performance,video, sculpture, painting, and poetry. Critically engaging with certain popular modes of production and cultural parameters, such as accumulation, excess and repetition, she seeks to reveal the dissonances and dichotomies that shape daily life. Deception becomes a means to disrupt the boundaries of traditional dialectical hierarchies: art and craft, technology and handmade, mass production and uniqueness, innovation and imitation, personal and collective, figurative and abstract, West and East.