Mounir Fatmi’s Peripheral Vision at Photo Tangier 2026

 

Renowned for his multidisciplinary practice that engages with language, technology, history and systems of knowledge, Fatmi has consistently questioned the structures that shape our understanding of the world. Through photography, video, sculpture and installation, his work examines the limits of communication and the instability of meaning, often drawing on philosophy, science and literature to challenge established ways of seeing.

 

In Peripheral Vision, Fatmi turns the camera towards himself. The work comprises a series of four black-and-white photographic self-portraits depicting the artist from the front, back and side profiles. In each image, his face is partially concealed by a large white geometric protractor held at eye level. While much of his identity appears obscured, his eyes remain visible through two circular openings in the measuring instrument, creating a striking tension between concealment and revelation.

 

The visual language of the work recalls the experimental aesthetics of early twentieth-century avant-garde movements, where geometry became a means of reimagining perception and proposing new ways of understanding reality. Here, the protractor functions not only as a measuring device but also as a conceptual tool, suggesting the desire to quantify, define and organise the world while simultaneously exposing the limitations of such ambitions.

 

At the core of Peripheral Vision lies an investigation into the nature of vision itself. Borrowing its title from the biological concept of peripheral vision, the work distinguishes between focused, analytical observation and the broader, more intuitive awareness that exists at the edges of perception. While central vision concentrates on a fixed point, peripheral vision allows us to register movement, context and relationships beyond our immediate focus. Fatmi uses this scientific framework as a metaphor for artistic practice, proposing a mode of seeing that embraces uncertainty, complexity and contradiction.

The series also engages with philosophical questions surrounding representation and language. Echoing Ludwig Wittgenstein’s assertion that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” the photographs explore the inability of visual and aesthetic systems to fully communicate human thought and experience. The geometric apparatus that obscures the artist’s face becomes a symbol of these limitations, highlighting the distance between perception and understanding, expression and meaning.

 

This tension between precision and ambiguity is further reinforced through Fatmi’s ongoing interest in geometry and mathematics. The circular forms of the protractor recall references that have appeared throughout his practice, including his engagement with the work of Frederick Soddy, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist and mathematician whose poem The Kiss Precise inspired several of Fatmi’s earlier projects. In both cases, geometry becomes a language through which questions of order, harmony and human connection can be explored.

 

Despite its apparent formal simplicity, Peripheral Vision operates across multiple registers: scientific, philosophical, psychological and aesthetic. Combining figurative portraiture with geometric abstraction, the work proposes a reflection on how knowledge is constructed and how individuals position themselves within increasingly complex systems of information. The act of partially covering the face becomes both a gesture of self-erasure and self-definition, revealing the paradoxes inherent in representation itself.

 

Presented within Tangier, Why Tangier?, Peripheral Vision offers a contemporary counterpoint to the exhibition’s historical survey of the city. While many of the photographs on view document Tangier’s changing landscapes and communities, Fatmi’s work turns inward, examining the mechanisms through which we perceive and interpret the world around us. In doing so, it extends the exhibition’s broader inquiry into image-making, memory and identity.

 

Through its fusion of conceptual rigor and visual economy, Peripheral Vision exemplifies Fatmi’s enduring commitment to challenging established modes of thought. The work invites viewers to reconsider not only what they see, but how they see—suggesting that meaning often resides not at the centre of vision, but at its edges.