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Born in Corsica in 1978, Mael Denegri resides and practices her art in Geneva, Switzerland. A descendant of Algerian and pied-noir parents who experienced the exodus, Mael, a girl born from the taboo of this Algerian pied-noir conflict, addresses her identity as an African mixed race while defying the reductive conventions that sometimes deny this reality. This artistic approach emanates from the paradoxical observation that certain North Africans can consider themselves more linked to their specific ethnic group than to a global African identity and distance themselves from the term "African". Her work explores the subtleties of this reality, challenging the sometimes reductive conventions that might deny it, and offers a nuanced perspective on North African identity, highlighting its mixed membership in the vast African heritage.
Mael Denegri's academic career revolved around literature studies in art history and cinema history and subsequent training in video and sculpture at the Beaux-Arts in Geneva. Since 2013, her artistic engagement has been primarily oriented toward painting, exploring a diverse range of subjects while conducting multidimensional research. Denegri's iconographic choices question the social role of the artist and the responsibility of art, part of an in-depth reflection on artistic commitment.
Evolving in a contemporary context marked by simulacrum and information saturation, the artist reappropriates history to initiate a political thought integrating the notions of utopia and reconstruction but also the significant concerns of ecocides. Her work opens onto a dimension of collective criticism, addressing transversal themes such as revolt movements, societal imagination, nature, myths, and traditional beliefs. These profound and universal subjects shine through in her works, where she builds universes through technical gestures, composing most of these paintings with abstract pictorial writing. This approach creates mental spaces, filling in the gaps by reconstructing certain parts, and reflects her keen perception of references from the history of art and cinema.
Mael Denegri's paintings thus convey the expression of a deep awareness of timeless subjects which, constantly reactivated by daily events, cross eras and myths to take shape in the contemporary context.
