At Bologna’s Fondazione MAST, Mohamed Bourouissa dares us to remember. In Communauté, his most expansive solo exhibition in Italy to date, the Franco-Algerian artist tugs at the seams of society through 20 years of artistic practice. The show brings together four of his most major projects, each a study in how individuals assert dignity within systems designed to overlook them.
Bourouissa’s career is one largely shaped by the narratives of those living at the edges of visibility. Working across mediums, his pieces chart the undercurrents of power and identity that structure and shape everyday life. His breakout series Péripherique (2005-2008), for example, paints an honest portrait of post-riot Paris, gathering friends, family and other non-actors to stage scenes of tension and violence with the compositional drama of 19th-century painting.
In Horse Day (2013–2019), the artist captures Black cowboys in North Philadelphia reclaiming the mythology of the American West. Bringing both horse and horsepower to mind, printed photographs appear on car hoods and fenders as riders affirm their presence in a frontier that tried to erase them, with stories of survival and pride in-hand. Meanwhile, Shoplifters (2014), explores a different kind of portraiture. Through 19 Polaroids, Bourouissa challenges the criminalization of poverty through grainy captures of would-be stolen detergent bottles, egg cartons and biscuits.
Communauté also marks the debut of his most recent project. HANDS (2025) reframes images from earlier series in cold, sculptural encounters. Metallic accents and deconstructed figures evoke ideas of control, coercion and the lack of touch in an increasingly surveilled world.
Bourouissa’s lens is never neutral, nor is it didactic. Holding a mirror up to the mechanisms of modern life, Communauté reminds us that art, at its sharpest, doesn’t simply observe the world, but unsettles it.
The exhibition is now on view in Bologna through September 28.
Fondazione MAST
Via Speranza, 42,
40133 Bologna BO,
Italy
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