Neïl Beloufa

Born in: 1985
From: Paris, France
Lives and works: Paris, France
Represented by: François Ghebaly

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Biography

French-Algerian artist Neïl Beloufa plays with a system that he is himself a part of, twisting the intersecting realities one encounters through the experience of human life. Spanning and combining video, sculpture, installation, and painting, his practice often invites the viewer to participate in the artwork. Deep-diving into our contemporary hyper-digital age, the young artist exposes conventions and the fiction-realities of politics and technology.

In a similar attempt to display man’s evolution towards a fusion of human and technological, Harun Farouki. The artist and filmmaker likewise showed how behavioral habits have grown to adapt to the digital age, and the understanding of oneself is now undetachable from technology.

Neïl Beloufa cites Gustave Courbet as an important inspiration and a modern figure of the artist. Due to his political engagement, Courbet was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to Switzerland, where he capitalized on his six month stay in prison by selling paintings referencing his sentence. As “L’Origine du monde” still makes headlines today by being censored on Facebook, the artist’s contemporaneity and provocative nature resonates with Neïl Beloufa’s oeuvre.

Career highlights

Solo shows

2018, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France: The Enemy of my Enemy
2016, K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai, China: Soft(a)ware
2016, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA: Projects 102: Neïl Beloufa
2015, Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin, Germany: Hope for the Best
2013, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA: Production Value

Group shows

2022, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France: Worlds of Networks
2019, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy: May You Live in Interesting Times
2011, Musée Art Moderne d’Alger, Algiers, Algeria: Le retour

Collections

Düsseldorf, Germany: Julia Stoschek
Paris, France: Centre Pompidou
Vienna, Austria: Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
Shanghai, China: K11 Art Foundation
2016, New York, USA: Museum of Modern Art

Media

2021, Hypebeast: Neïl Beloufa Has Transformed the Pirelli Hangar Bicocca Into a Dystopian Amusement Park
2020, The New York Times: The French Artist Who Saw the Pandemic Coming
2018, Interview Magazine: Neïl Beloufa’s art takes on war monuments and disgraced world leaders
2017, Le Monde: Neil Beloufa brouille les lignes de l’art contemporain
2016, Even Magazine: An interview with Neïl Beloufa

Selected artworks

Neïl Beloufa Can on Red, 2019 François Ghebaly €20,000 Buy now