Charif Benhelima

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Charif Benhelima ( born in Brussels, 1967 ) is a Belgium photographer and currently lives and works in Berlin as well as in Antwerp. Consumed by a sense of incongruence – as the artist early became orphan of a mixed couple – Benhelima embarked in a nine-year (1990-1999) photographic research on the feeling of being a foreigner, which later resulted in the tough yet poetic book Welcome to Belgium, Ludion, (2003).

New York city was somehow a turning point in Benhelima’s work, once he brought his documentary approach to the popular Polaroid 600 (camera and film). Living in that city for 3 years, he developed the unpaired and far most accomplished work made with an amateuristic Polaroid, Harlem on my mind. Divided in two series, I Was, I Am and Projections – purposely presented in vibachrome and greater formats - is a reflection of the black Americans situation in the artist’s life.

In 2003 Behelima participated in the artist residence program at Cite Internationale des Artes, Paris (Fr), where he continued working with the instantaneous film in the “fake document” (so-defined by the artist) project ‘Semites”. Part of a long and layered process – and important issue of Benhelima’s oeuvre - this work that is led by his own Arab and Jewish background deals with a more conceptual approach. Benhelima is granted with The Künstlerhaus Bethanien, artist residence Program 2005, Berlin, (G).