Salma Mochtari is a researcher and curator based between Marseilles and Arles.
A member of the curatorial and editorial collective Qalqalah قلقلة since December 2020, her research often stems from the conceptual circulations between the fields of art and contemporary philosophy. Based on the specific cases of archival absences and black studies, she works the present and future genealogies between contemporary, decolonial and queer critical studies, with the heritage of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida or Judith Butler. In addition to discursive programming, her curatorial practice is based on forms of collective production through workshops, translation or fiction writing.
Between 2020 and 2022, she collaborated with KADIST Paris as discursive curator, where she developed editorial and curatorial programming rooted in the political and societal issues of contemporary artistic practices. In 2022, she is affiliated with the research cooperative of Clermont Métropole’s art school with the project “Ce que les Black Studies nous font faire”. Since 2023, she collaborates with LUMA Arles as an associate researcher.
After studying the management of artistic institutions at HEC Paris, and contemporary philosophy at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and the University of Paris Nanterre, she completed in 2022 her Masters’ thesis on the politics of subjection and writing in a comparative approach of Michel Foucault and Saidiya Hartman.
She has presented her research in several art schools, universities, and art centers such as Villa Arson (2022), ESAAA Annecy (2022), Tanzquartier in Vienna (2022), Tashweesh Festival (2022), MEP Paris (2023), Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Marseille (2023), Mudam Luxembourg (2023), Mucem – Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (2023), CAPC Bordeaux (2023) and wrote on the works of established and emerging artists such as Louisa Babari, Cindy Bannani, Salim Bayri, Rahima Gambo, Simone Leigh, Rose Lowder, Randa Maroufi, Ghita Skali, Renee Stout and Ruth G. Waddy. With Line Ajan, she curated Losing Ground: On Disappeared Art Institutions and their Ghosts at Kunstcentrum Buda (2023) and with Victorine Grataloup, Dead Cat Bounce at les Beaux-Arts de Caen (2023). With Qalqalah, she organized the Gaza Solidarity Movie Night cycle in Paris, Maromme and Marseilles to raise funds for Medical Aid for Palestinians after the beginning of the war on Gaza. In 2024, she is the curator of the 2nd edition of the Daret Residency in Casablanca (Morocco), where she accompanies two young artists for thirteen months and develops a public program, an exhibition and an edition.
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