For its debut at the 1-54 London fair, Galerie Les filles du calvaire is thrilled to present the works of Maya Inès Touam and Abdelhak Benallou.
Abdelhak Benallou, born in 1992 in Chlef, currently lives and works in Paris. His canvases, with their striking realism, may initially impress through sheer technical skill. However, the true fascination of his works lies elsewhere. His portraits and still lifes reveal a meticulous and very intimate attention to reality. By depicting visual elements that deeply move him, whether a face or an everyday detail, he offers a very personal vision, playing with an artificial chiaroscuro. The result is a painting whose pictorial realism does not diminish its mystery. After five years at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Alger, he graduated from the École Supérieure d’art de Dunkerque in 2019, and more recently from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Winner in February 2022 of the first prize in the second edition of the Prix Sarr, awarded by the Sarr collection in partnership with the Beaux-Arts de Paris; winner in June 2022 of the Prix du portrait des amis des Beaux-arts; selected for the Emerige scholarship to be awarded in October 2022.
Born in France of Algerian parents, in 1988 Maya Inès Touam’s works experiment across various mediums and formats, drawing from her Western cultural references. Following the tradition of Duchamp, she focuses on abstracting objects from their intended uses to highlight their richness and formal diversity. By appropriating the codes of the still life genre, the photographer expresses her dual identity. She reveals herself through symbolic elements that resonate with her, echoing her childhood memories, hybrid fantasies of identity, or stories linked to her continent of origin. A graduate of the Beaux-arts de Paris in 2013, she received in 2017, an award from the Alliances Foundation in Morocco. In 2021, during a residency at the H Foundation in France, she extended her research to the diasporas of the African continent in the country, offering a postcolonial look at immigration. Recently she exhibited at Les Rencontres de la photography, the Institute of Islamic Cultures and Museum of Immigration History.
Prices are available upon request. Feel free to contact us at paris@fillesducalvaire.com for any further information.
