PERFORMANCE
IMMIGRATION_MAN 2024
For DARE-DARE’s biannual Passeport event, I showed up as a border agent—armed with hundreds of second-hand stickers and an orchestral rendition of Nash’s Immigration Man (a piece of media I cherish for its bizarre incongruity).
These stickers, along with verbal and written affirmations like “Yes!”, “Great!”, and “This is excellent!”, offered a brief reprieve from the relentless grind of scrutiny and rejection that defines adult life. A praise kink ATM, if you will.
No withdrawal limits.
I intended to stay in character, but it turns out my border agent act was a little too effective. Several attendees looked genuinely unsettled when being asking to properly line up, forcing me to pivot into something less threatening—something closer to an overexcited toddler on a sticker bender. This worked.
Frazzled in an oversized collared shirt, stickers everywhere, I interrogated participants with high-stakes questions: Fast cars, trucks, fairies, or the color blue? Their answers determined the fate of their passport contents, which I distributed with the urgency of someone who absolutely believed the right sticker could change a life.
MY_RIPA_PERFORMANCE 2023
A six-minute sprint through as many outfits, scenes, and perfectly framed moments as possible—all designed to be captured, circulated, and consumed. Receipts without a purchase.
Artifice and fraud.
An ever-shifting voiceover stitches the whole mess together, veering between sincerity and spectacle, blurring the line between an art piece or an overproduced joke at the audience’s expense.
Either answer is fine. Playing along is optional.
I often make work that disappears—intimate, undocumented performances that exist only in memory. But memory doesn’t pay rent, and sincerity doesn’t always translate. So this time, I tried cutting to the chase. Why suffer for something to be real? Why not skip the middle steps, make something blatantly self-serving, and actually enjoy it?
The photos are proof of something, just not necessarily what happened. Because in between the spectacle—somewhere between the sheer logistical chaos—and I hate to admit it - there were explicit moments of sincerity. Maybe even vulnerability. Just not the kind that fit neatly into a press kit.
Either way, the result is the same: a performance that only exists in copies—except for the parts that don’t. But good luck proving it.
A_HEMORRHAGING_SENSE_OF_SELF_PERCEPTION 2021
All TENs unit performances relied on a homemade shock device affectionately (and ominously)
named The Hand of God.
Strapped to my arm, it delivered uncontrolled electrical impulses that directly interfered with my motor function, causing involuntary muscle contractions and erratic, uncoordinated movements.
The performance is essentially a meditation on failure: the kind that’s inevitable, that spirals, that leaves a mess in its wake - physically, interpersonally, spectacularly. It was about watching yourself make a huge mess and being unable to stop it.
It began with a beautifully set table, pristine and full of promise.
Then I attempted to pour the red wine. My best attempt made impossible by the violent misfires of my own body. When there was nothing left to spill I stood back and contemplating the mess I made.
This performance occurred twice, once in an intimate gathering in 2020, then again at Bar Bifteck in 2021.
SELF_MUMMIFICATION_I and II 2020
Self-Mummification was first performed as a durational piece for a small gathering at Concordia University, then again—undocumented—at Éco-Musée des Beaux-Arts for the 2020 Art Matters Festival.
I sewed myself into a bedsheet using thread, pulling each stitch tighter until I was fully enclosed. Part escape, part endurance exercise, the act turned the audience into bystanders to something they couldn’t interrupt.
Inspired by the death shrouds used in North African burial traditions, the process was both a retreat and a restriction—sealing myself in while everything else carried on as usual.
Quiet, slow, and strangely practical.
OTHER
The Entity™ 2023
For a site-specific performance for AKT I at Bar Lashop, I took on the role of The Entity — a figure that existed only to distribute a variety of cryptic messages. Dressed in character, I moved through the space, wordlessly handing out scrolls to attendees.
Your Honour 2019
This performance was built around a unique and precious material: Nile silt—rich clay harvested from the riverbanks, darkened by manganese and millennia of organic matter. I balanced in a plank position on sharp bricks made from this clay, a brick under each hand and foot. Below me, roses from Morocco. The strain set in, the bricks cracked, and at the three-minute mark, they gave way. The light went out as I fell, crushing the roses beneath me.
Droughtstick 2018
Originally designed as an autonomous, sound-reactive kinetic sculpture, the piece was a wooden box (part instrument, part dysfunctional plinth) filled with shells and seeds, meant to roll and tumble gracefully in response to the levels of sound in a room. But during its unveiling, the mechanics failed. Instead of quiet precision, the box lurched and jammed unpredictably.
I was forced to intervene, scrambling to keep it moving, my own frantic energy reflecting its struggle. A machine failing at autonomy, an artist failing at detachment.
MOULD-MAKING
FLESH
WAX
During COVID, I taught myself lifecasting through trial and error, working alone and refining techniques as I went. That experiment grew into a small yet sustainable business making candles from repurposed, eco-friendly wax.
My foot was an unexpected bestseller, but I also created other designs, using 3D printing to create sculptural and functional pieces.
Orders traveled to places I’d never been, parts of me sent across the world, to be delightfully immolated.
MISC.
ARTIC!
Artic!/Encorps (renamed annually) is a Montreal-based collective of artists from different disciplines that came together during COVID-19 to reclaim public space—militant in its approach, interdisciplinary by necessity, and deliberately resistant to generational and institutional boundaries.
With support from Jeunes Volontaires and Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, the collective organized sixteen free site-specific events, activating parks and overlooked spaces with performance, painting, theatre, sculpture, fibre arts, installation, and food.
These interventions fostered spontaneous exchange—bypassing traditional structures in favor of direct participation by artists and the general public alike.
Hundreds of works emerged, shaped by those who showed up and engaged. No pretense, no separation.
PIGMENTS
I started making paints and pigments in 2016 while in Cairo, mostly as a way to avoid actually painting. Breaking down materials was more interesting than using them, and I figured it was a great chance to venture outside of reliable but toxic commercial paints and pigments.
I documented these experiments on YouTube, not as tutorials, but as open-ended trials. The real value came from the comments section, where people with all kinds of expertise weighed in, corrected, expanded, and turned the process into something communal.
