Born in Mohammedia
Lives and works in Marrakech
A multidisciplinary Moroccan visual artist, Yassine Balbzioui began his artistic training in the 1990s. He holds several degrees, including three years at the École des Beaux-Arts in Casablanca (Morocco), a DNAP and a DNSEP from the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux (France). In 2001 and 2002, he pursued further studies in Arts and Media through the Education Abroad Program at the University of California, Berkeley (USA).
Balbzioui’s practice unfolds across multiple axes: primarily a painter and draughtsman, he develops a formally and semantically rich body of work rooted in a neo-expressionist vein. His explorations of human animality—frequently mediated through the motif of the mask—intersect with notions of derision, idiocy, and the grotesque, which he embraces as deliberate artistic stances.
Infused with a sense of distance reminiscent of the Fluxus spirit—though without direct formal ties to the movement—his theatricalized oeuvre systematically and radically challenges the so-called "spirit of seriousness." Driven by an unrelenting vitalism and raw energy, his work blurs the boundaries between art and life. While the everyday remains a central source of inspiration, Balbzioui filters it through his singular, offbeat gaze, blending it with influences from Z-movie cinema and horror films, theatre, dance, folk tales, and legends. Everything is fodder for his boundless imagination.
Constantly experimenting, he also works across a variety of media, including sculpture, ceramics, photography, installation, and video. Frequently appearing in his own works, he has developed a strong performative practice, where the full extent of his creative madness is on display.
Recently selected by Simon Njami for the 12th Dakar Biennale (Senegal), Yassine Balbzioui has exhibited extensively over the past fifteen years. His work has been shown in France (notably at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris for the 2014–2015 "Contemporary Morocco" panorama exhibition, as well as in Bordeaux, Montluçon, and Nantes), in Morocco (including the inaugural exhibition of the Mohammed VI Museum in Rabat in 2014, as well as shows in Casablanca, Rabat, and Essaouira), in Germany (Bayreuth, Stuttgart, Berlin), the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Mexico, Italy (Cagliari, Sardinia, Milan), Spain, and in Bamako, Mali. His international career has been marked by numerous artist residencies, most recently at Trident Space in Hyderabad, India.
His works have entered several private and public collections, including those of the Bank Al-Maghrib Museum in Rabat (Morocco) and the Fondation Alliances (Morocco).
— Marie Deparis-Yafil