Lichtekooi is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition by Benjamin Verhoeven and Amine Lahrach.
The two artists met in 2020 during a residency at LE 18, the multidisciplinary cultural space in Marrakesh. Connecting over daily explorations through the medina, they discovered a shared gaze and common interests. Their collaboration evolved organically, merging Verhoeven’s exploration of image legitimacy in foreign culture with Lahrach’s perspective on cultural identity. The walls of LE 18 became their canvas, where tiles served as a drawing board for conceptualizing ideas and connections. This transformed into a research project towards the “image commune” transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. The tiles, like pixels, reveal a richer image when connected and serve as a tool to question the classical frame of image production.
At Lichtekooi, Verhoeven and Lahrach will present an in-situ installation containing cyanotype tiles. Resembling the sending of a digital image, part of the tiles will already be in place, while the rest will be shipped from Morocco to Belgium during the course of the exhibition, completing the image as each tile arrives.
Amine Lahrach (°1995, Casablanca, Morocco) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Marrakesh. He studied film at the Institute of Cinematography in Ouarzazate. His work is built around performative actions that manifest in various forms, including visual art, food practices, slam poetry, and nonclassical radio practice. His artistic approach is rooted in everyday idioms and driven by the social friction between himself and society. Through his work, he seeks to reinterpret social reflection and challenge collective perceptions of the world around us. Lahrach’s artistic journey began in the underground scene of Casablanca. He later joined Qanat, a platform for contemporary art, and in 2019, he became part of the LE 18 collective in Marrakesh. He is the initiator of Safina, an artistic project that explores interdisciplinary collaborations questioning the city of Safi. During Documenta fifteen, he published “Tighaline under water revelation.”
Benjamin Verhoeven (°1990, Malle, Belgium) is a visual artist who lives and works in Brussels. He studied at the KASK - School of Arts in Ghent and is a laureate at the HISK. His work revolves around the image as a medium and its (re)production, with audiovisual apparatuses as his main working tool. In his ongoing project “Scanning Cinema” he deals with the action of scanning moving images and putting them back into animated film. Verhoeven participated in various national and international exhibitions; among them at KANAL/Centre Pompidou (BE), Mu:ZEE (BE), Cinematek (BE), University Art Gallery Irvine, California (US) and the 6th Moscow Biennale, special program (RU).
Artists: Benjamin Verhoeven & Amine Lahrach