Soufiane Zian, born in Tetouan in 1990, my love and passion for painting and drawing began from the age of five, mom and dad were my first inspirations, mom in my childhood knitted me colorful woolen clothes and dad using a whiteboard used to explain things to me through simple drawings, I loved it and my passion for drawing started through it, this was my first encounter with shapes and colors.

My love for drawing and painting increased at a young age thanks to books that were at home, such as the Encyclopedia of the World in your Hands, and Encyclopedie des Connaissances Actuelles
Through which I got acquainted with works of art from various artists, where one of the books had a work by Salvador Dali and some works by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and others artists from different eras and from various fields such as drawings, paintings, comics and animation, one page touched on the works of Walt Disney and another with a picture of the beginnings of animation cinema with characters such as Felix the Cat, which accompanied silent cinema, in which I liked the character of Charlie Chaplin.

I was one of the lucky ones when I was young to watch animation channels such as Cartoon Network in its beginnings , when I remember the presenter of Cartoon Network Moxy in the Moxy Show which was a smart idea at the time, and after the programs of the day ended at Cartoon Network Channel, TNT channel appear where I was watching old movies like King Kong 1933 Directed and Produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, or the NeverEnding Story 1984 Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, or The Legend Of Oz 1939 Directed by Victor Fleming, I watched other animation channels in my younger years such as Disney Channel, when I had a permanent appointment with Disney movies from the golden era going all the way to the experimental era, i also watched Fox Kids and some few other animation channels as well that were showing one after another, I was also watching the arabic dubbed cartoons at 2M in the evening and at mbc at noon until the Arabic channels of animation began to appear starting from Space Toon to MBC 3 and Cartoon Network Arabic, this period I was influenced by various cartoon characters such as the characters of Looney Tunes as Bugs Bunny and Mickey's friends as Donald's and Ninja Turtles and many others, and grow with me the love for drawing, painting and experimenting.

My inclinations began to move towards surrealism, I was finding on it an outlet and a respite from rational thinking , especially after I moved from the school I was in to a new school , I was having some difficulties in adapting to the new surroundings , I was drawing in my notebooks , at the school table , on the wall of our roof , in papers , in everything I find in front of me . That overwhelming energy that pushes me to express, despite the punishments that I received every time I draw at a new table at school, was and still is the happiness that floods me whenever I draw a new work , that feeling was enough motivation for me to continue pushing myself forward.

Starting from my last years in elementary school and up to this day , I have been influenced by cinema and the moving ideas that it presents , I have been constantly going to the cinema and buying my favorite movie discs , films such as Pan’s Labyrinth 2006 Directed by Guillermo del Toro , the Matrix 1999 Directed by the Wachowskis, the Game 1997 Directed by David Fincher, Tekkonkinkreet 2006 Created by Taio Matsumoto Directed by Michael Arias and Paprika 2006 Directed by Satochi kon, and I have also been influenced by the importance of silent moments in Japanese cinema such as Hayao Miyazaki's films, where the absence of moments of movement in the film is an outlet for harmony with the movie world, it helps absorbing the previous scenes and preparing to receive what coming next.

Then I got acquainted with pop surrealism or lowbrow which appeared at the end of the sixties, in which I found common points with my works and increased with him my love and interest for the animation films of the thirties such as Fleischers films like Popeye the Sailor meets Sinbad the Sailor 1936 and Betty Boop in Snow-White 1933.

I was admitted to the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan in 2013 and graduated from it in 2018. I participated with my works on various occasions here's some of them :

2022 Projet Lab Digital Maroc et Institut Francais, Tétouan

• Prize received for animation project "Blind Effect" Scholarship of 3000 Euro support for the creation of an animated short film.
• Participation in a Machinima workshop learning then creating a Machinima short movie, my short was « the Way-Back »,

2022 Rencontres Audiovisuelles, Lille (France)

Participation in a workshop under the theme "Biodiversity, from threat to extinction" as part of the Video Mapping Festival in Lille (France) from the (5 – 03 – 2022 ) to (13 – 03 - 2022 ).
Link to the project : https://vimeo.com/726035095

2021 Novembre Numérique

Participation in a Mapping workshop in Tetouan on (14 - 11 - 2021 ) to (19 - 11 - 2021 ).

Green Olive Arts Art Residency

• 2023 Collective art exhibition 2023 organized by Green Olive Arts to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Green Olive Arts.
• 2022 Collective art exhibition 2022 organized by Green Olive Arts in collaboration with TED; Qatar Foundation and afikra in Ben Guérir (13-10-2022).
• 2019 Art residency 2019 at the Green Olive Arts art residency from (14-01-2019) to (02-02-2019).

Live Room Urban Art Week, Tangier
• 2021 Mural in Tangier in the perimeter wall of the Spanish church in front of the gallery Kent in the event "Urban Art Week 5".
• 2019 Mural painting in Tangier on Ibn Toumart Street in the event "Urban Art Week 3".
• 2018 Mural painting in Tangier Sahat el Medina in an event "Urban Art Week 2".

FICAM Festival International de Cinéma d’Animation Meknes
• 2023 INBA Stand at FICAM.
• 2021 Storyboard training course at the "Ficam Professional Meeting 2021 Pro edition" 5 days.
• 2015 Participation in the Scriptwriting – Storyboarding workshop from (20-03-2015) to (25-03-2015).

Global Game Jam Tangier
• 2020 Participation in the Globale Game Jam 2020 in Tangier (creation of a playable demo of video games in 48hr)
FIBAD Forum International de Bande Dessinée de Tétouan
• 2017 Special mention prize from the jury for my Comic "HOT & COLD: Samir & his Dream far from this World"./ SIEL Salon International de l’Edition et du Livre 2022 à Rabat
• 2022 INBA Stand at SIEL + Digital drawing workshop for children./ Instituto Español Juan de la Cierva, Tetuan
• 2016 Course on the history of comics plus a drawing workshop that I realized for the students of the school "Juan de la Cierva".

Soufiane Zian is a surrealist artist who creates a world parallel to our world in which we live, a world that splits from this world without planning or realizing what the final form of each work will turn out to be, spontaneous surrealistic works driven by emotions, reflect the beauty and ugliness of this world, sometimes beauty mixes with ugliness and evil emerges from attractive colors. A world in which shapes are blurred by colors and reality becomes untitled, or it seems so, because appearances are deceptive and because illusion overshadows the truth, this truth may not be seen or we may not want to see it, we may ignore it or we may live with it.

I painted a person I named WiCO, this person does not carry colors, I put him to represent society and this colorful world around him is the truth, sweet and bitter, it may not seem clear due to the visual camouflage that colors exert on us. I also painted Strange characters in a black and white world where the masks fall off and the optical illusion disappears with them.

When I start a new piece, I don’t want to have a comprehensive idea about the final work, I want to be surprised by the final form of the work, I want it to be unexpected even for myself, so that my passion will continue throughout my work on it.

When I am aware of the final form of the work I may not want to continue because the work ends for me when I see it completed in my head.

I leave my subconsciousness to do what he sees fit so that the enthusiasm inside me get eager to see how the finished work turns out.

In my works, seriousness is mixed with childishness, seriousness comes from time and what it left in my memory, and childishness comes from my nostalgia of Childhood and my desire to renew it, and my works sometimes reflect this endless struggle between the seriousness of the world and its rigor and childhood life and its spontaneity.

If I hadn’t drawing and painting when I was a child, I wouldn’t have been like that when I grow up, because that freedom I discovered and loved as a child and now I may be trapped by it, I still love it and it’s what led me to where I am now.

I always want to try new materials and tools and use differents medium of artistic expression to test myself in experiments that I may not have experienced before, but I may see in them an addition to a new work and a renewal of an old passion. I’ve had different experiences from paintings, drawings, murals, sculptures, digital painting, 3D, photography, design, video-mapping, graphic novels, comics and 2D animation and I always want to try more and add additional flavors to my work as much as I can. I work with what is available and i try to reach what is not, every work has its challenges and these challenges remain in the memory and the artwork remains an archive that testifies to these experiences.