Born in 1971 in Constantine, Algeria. Lives and works in Berlin.

In opposition to the image of a formatted, homogenous and structured world, the work of Algerian artist Adel Abdessemed provocatively denounces and dismantles the alienations and the different forms of oppression inherent to contemporary society’s cultural, economic and political systems. In the video Foot on (2005), the raw and unaffected gesture of a bare foot crushing a Coca-cola can becomes an act of deconstruction - in its most basic form - of a symbol of capitalist power. Direct and immediate, the image avoids all militancy, becoming more of a “performative declaration” in which the force of the gesture gives way to an opening up of meaning.