Artist Biography

"In his work over the past five years, Mohammed El Mourid has, for example, employed in several circumstances goatskins, used in the South of the Mediterranean for purposes as diverse as making works-for the storage and transportation of water so precious in those climates-and musical percussion instruments. Driven by a spirit close to Arte Povera, in various works Mohammed El Mourid has concentrated on highlighting the tangible qualities of the material, sometimes supple, sometimes stretched to breaking point, its odour, its softness, its sound potentialities, and its slow degradation given that, as it wasn`t destined for traditional use, it hadn`t been tanned. It was about feeling the proximity of the material to life; the life of the animal killed of the men who use it for music or survival and, of course, that of the artist.