Saïd Afifi was born in 1983 in Casablanca.
A graduate of the Tétouan School of Fine Arts in 2008, he joined the Chantal Akerman promotion of the National Studio for Contemporary Arts - Le Fresnoy - from 2016 to 2018.
Passionate about cinema, literature, and new technologies, he has been developing research since 2012 on postmodernist architecture, drawing, among other influences, on the writings of Nietzsche and Jean Baudrillard, as well as the architectural forms of Claude Parent and Le Corbusier. He freely borrows some of their “obsessions”: time, speed, archaeology, identity, etc. More recently, his work has shifted toward issues of natural landscapes, biomimicry, and the impact of new technologies on the observation of the world.
There is an ambivalence in Saïd Afifi's work that slides from one piece to the next, never allowing us to fully grasp the complexity of the issues at stake.
In 2018, he exhibited for the first time at Le Fresnoy with the immersive installation Yemaya, in virtual reality, accompanied by five drawings. The visitor is invited, through the lens of virtual reality glasses, to wander through a cave during a meditative and poetic exploration.
This work consists of scientifically accurate images of three underwater caves (located in the Mediterranean). The details and volumes of these caves were captured through the process of photogrammetry, using thousands of two-dimensional high-definition photographs, which were processed and assembled with software to recreate a three-dimensional space.
Fascinated by the precision of scientific digital images and their ability to renew our perception of the world, Saïd Afifi appropriated this material to assemble these images into a single cave. Like a researcher and an obsessive collector, he extracted, duplicated, and assembled details from each one. By combining these three caves, the artist reinvents reality in a kind of mental journey that aims to bridge Europe and Africa and, much like his work Naufrage du cube, disregards reality to the point of making borders disappear.
His works are part of several prestigious collections, including the Centre Pompidou (France), the Museum of Bank Al-Maghrib (Morocco), and the Norval Foundation (South Africa).
Saïd Afifi lives and works in Paris.