Exhibitions
YASSINE MEKHNACHE
June 13 – September 20, 2025
23 Rue de Montchoisy, 1207 Genève
Geneva
Born in Lyon in 1979, Yassine Mekhnache is a self-taught artist whose path, off the beaten track, has led him from the raw energy of street graffiti to a deeply embodied form of painting. For over two decades, he has explored the interplay between instinctive gesture, ancestral textile traditions, and quest for the spiritual.
His work has emerged through dialogue: with matter, with others, with the unknown. Since 2007, he has been working closely with Moroccan embroiderers in Tamesloht and Tamil artisans in Pondicherry, India, who handcraft the textile bases of his canvases. These unique, intricate pieces travel the world before the first brushstroke is applied. They carry within them hours, sometimes months, of painstaking, silent, collective work.
When the canvas returns to the artist’s Parisian studio, it becomes the stage for a dialogue between embroidery and painting, between patience and sudden impulse. Yassine weaves inks, oils, pigments and liberated gestures, into a dynamic tension between spiritual density and organic abstraction.
PAINTING AS INVOCATION, THREAD AS MEMORY.
Inspired by the great Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds, his body of work is guided by a movement toward elevation, a spiritual and inner journey, a quest for transcendence. Each canvas becomes an aesthetic, sensory, and symbolic journey.
In 2023, this singular path was honoured with a major retrospective at 19M, the CHANEL Foundation in Paris, a space devoted to showcasing artisanal mastery and the bridges between contemporary art and heritage craftsmanship. This institutional recognition underscores both the integrity and the growing resonance of Yassine Mekhnache’s work within today’s artistic landscape.
His work has been exhibited in renowned institutions, such as the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Dakar Biennale, the Casablanca Biennale and at RX Gallery (New York & Paris), as well as at major international art fairs, such as Art Paris, 1-54 in London and Marrakech, Abu Dhabi Art and Asia Now. His pieces can be found in numerous private collections across France, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Each canvas is entirely unique, the result of a long and creative process and collaboration between the artist and artisans steeped in ancient traditions. This rarity, combined with the richness of the artist’s gesture and the depth of his intention, bestows upon each work a precious, almost archival dimension. In a market increasingly attuned to of the sincerity of artistic process and the integrity of materials, Yassine’s work stands out for its authenticity and its evocative power. The growing enthusiasm surrounding his work is also amplified through broader cultural channels. The documentary ENCRÉ, directed by Rachid Djaïdani between 2012 and 2013 and selected for the Cinéma du Réel Festival at the Centre Pompidou in 2015, as well as the Festival of Art Films at the Louvre in 2016, offers a rare and intimate portrait of the artist, closely following his daily life between Paris, Morocco, and New York.
The film, widely screened in schools and colleges throughout France, reinforces the educational and human dimension of his work. Acquiring one of his works is not simply a gesture of collection. It is a form of engagement, supporting living traditions, amplifying unheard voices, and participating in a movement that values cultural memory and social responsibility.
Yassine Mekhnache paints to connect. His canvases are crossings, bridges, prayers without dogma. They move us as much as they elevate us. And already, within the art world and the eyes of those who collect, his work carries the quiet strength of something destined to endure.
