Born in 1999, Ouafa Benjawad is a multidisciplinary artist whose artistic practice has in recent years focused mainly on comics.

Published in anthologies on various themes and a few magazines including Anathema and WinC Magazine, she has also participated in exhibitions locally and abroad. No matter the medium - from photography to comics, including illustration - its primary concern is the search for what is buried, what is hidden in plain sight or rather, what we refuses to see. For this reason, the exploration of the body, the erotic as well as physical and emotional inhibitions is the main axis of his artistic research.

Revisiting and exploring his Amazigh heritage through comics is also his main concern lately.

To view his Portfolio, you can visit: obeni.weebly.com
Obenji.weebly.com

It would be difficult to define a single artistic approach, because it varies depending on the medium, the slice of life of the artist, etc. However, it would be a lie to deny that there is not a common thread linking these different approaches.
Indeed, if these have adapted to the interior changes of the artist, the fact is that the body remains a central theme, a point of no return. Starting from the principle that the body is sincere, that it reflects our interiority in an uncompromising way, we can say that art is there at its service.
The body waits, vulnerable and open, while the artist, using various mediums, using the power of line and narration, attempts to incise it like a surgeon. To reveal his essence, to explore these emotions which penetrate him and which leave their mark, non-apologetic.
The central point of the artist's artistic approach is therefore this research, this spiritual and sincere quest for the soul, for Eros, for what Is, through comics, photography and drawing.

Photography: The works presented constitute a series entitled “Decomposition” and are the result of research work around flesh and its imprint. My main goal is to give meaning to redundancy, to the search for the Trace and the imprint via the medium of photography. For me these photographs are more like “photo-paintings”, a concept I arrived at during my plastic research. It’s more about digging, following this something of the universe anchored within each body, marked inside each flesh. Inspired by Alina Szapocznikow's limb sculptures, I wanted to exploit the appendages (hands and feet), after having previously exploited the trunk track during my course at the Beaux-Arts. Hence the need to butcher the body, to show the same image which repeats itself like an echo, like a silent cry which you never stop hearing deep within you. Conceived like a triptych, these monochromes concentrate and synthesize. The high grain of the photos almost evokes the texture of flesh. A reminder that despite all our efforts to polish and smooth the body, its fallibility will resurface one day or another. Direct, the photography is uncompromising, almost merciless. It reveals the details we want to hide, like the hairs and folds of our aging flesh, but above all, me, you, us...