BIOGRAPHy

Jaouad Bentama is a French-American painter of Moroccan descent whose practice explores the mechanisms of memory, rupture, and resilience. Navigating between cultures from an early age, he shaped a visual sensibility grounded in instinct and lived experience rather than formal education, using art as a vital and necessary means of expression.

In 2012, his relocation to New York became a catalyst for his practice. He became an active figure in the artist-led collectives of the Lower East Side, joining the Con Artist Collective, followed by the Bowery Union

in 2014. In 2017, he joined Mana Contemporary, expanding his practice within an international context.

His early work laid the foundation for this inquiry by integrating everyday objects and childhood icons,

such as Mickey Mouse. Rather than pop imagery, these were treated as material anchors, artifacts carrying their own histories and collective memories. His practice shifted from the physical object to the canvas following a severe accident, which redefined his approach to the support. Transforming the surface into

a reactive substrate that records impact, pressure, and resistance, Bentama now uses the canvas to map

the process of resilience, where the material is repaired and layered, yet retains the visible traces

of its own transformation.

Today, Bentama’s work stands as a testament to the "anatomy of resilience," where the trace of experience

is not an end or a point of closure, but a foundational element of a vibrant, ongoing narrative.