A French artist of Berber origin, Adel Abdessemed was born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1971. He now lives and works in Paris. Against a backdrop of cultural censorship, he attended the École supérieure des beaux-arts in Algiers. He had to leave his native country for France in 1994, when the fear of terrorist attacks intensified in his surroundings. France represented a kind of second birth for the artist. It was here that he could truly develop his art, without censorship. Enrolled at the École nationale des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, he broadened his use of materials, exploring the possibilities of video and collaboration with a community of artists. Since his first solo exhibition in 2001, he has had several others, including at MoMA P.S.1 in New York, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Mathaf (Arab Museum of Modern Art) in Doha, and many others. The artist was given a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2012, and is represented in many international collections, both public and private.