Amine El Gotaibi

Amine El Gotaibi

Amine El Gotaibi

Amine El Gotaibi close by during the module construction, 2023 - Photo: Loutfi Souidi

Illuminate the light

Illuminate the light

ILLUMINATE THE LIGHT

These sculptures challenge the boundaries between nature and society, balancing materials and adapting the environment around them, bringing into light the abundance and beauty of the artist's native continent of Africa. Each sculpture is inspired by the seed of a pomegranate, a metaphor of abundance and diversity. What appears uniform at first glance becomes, upon closer observation, a gathering of infinite variation. Each seed holds its own geometry, its own particular form, yet together they constitute the whole. El Gotaibi seizes upon this botanical truth as a lens through which to examine how the world perceives Africa, too often reduced to a monolithic narrative, its vast diversity flattened into simplistic categories. The sculptures function as counter narratives, each form asserting its singularity while contributing to a larger constellation of meaning that within Africa, there is light and abundance. Like the pomegranate seeds themselves, these works speak to the generative power of the continent: a place that has long nourished the world with its resources, knowledge, and cultural wealth, yet whose contributions are frequently diminished or overlooked. The artist's geometric forms thus become vessels of correction, reframing Africa not as a place of lack but as a source of inexhaustible richness. Through this botanical metaphor made manifest in material and form, El Gotaibi insists upon complexity over simplification, upon recognition of the particular within the collective, upon the revolutionary act of seeing clearly what has always been present.

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ILLUMINATE THE LIGHT

These sculptures challenge the boundaries between nature and society, balancing materials and adapting the environment around them, bringing into light the abundance and beauty of the artist's native continent of Africa. Each sculpture is inspired by the seed of a pomegranate, a metaphor of abundance and diversity. What appears uniform at first glance becomes, upon closer observation, a gathering of infinite variation. Each seed holds its own geometry, its own particular form, yet together they constitute the whole. El Gotaibi seizes upon this botanical truth as a lens through which to examine how the world perceives Africa, too often reduced to a monolithic narrative, its vast diversity flattened into simplistic categories. The sculptures function as counter narratives, each form asserting its singularity while contributing to a larger constellation of meaning that within Africa, there is light and abundance. Like the pomegranate seeds themselves, these works speak to the generative power of the continent: a place that has long nourished the world with its resources, knowledge, and cultural wealth, yet whose contributions are frequently diminished or overlooked. The artist's geometric forms thus become vessels of correction, reframing Africa not as a place of lack but as a source of inexhaustible richness. Through this botanical metaphor made manifest in material and form, El Gotaibi insists upon complexity over simplification, upon recognition of the particular within the collective, upon the revolutionary act of seeing clearly what has always been present.

read more

ILLUMINATE THE LIGHT

These sculptures challenge the boundaries between nature and society, balancing materials and adapting the environment around them, bringing into light the abundance and beauty of the artist's native continent of Africa. Each sculpture is inspired by the seed of a pomegranate, a metaphor of abundance and diversity. What appears uniform at first glance becomes, upon closer observation, a gathering of infinite variation. Each seed holds its own geometry, its own particular form, yet together they constitute the whole. El Gotaibi seizes upon this botanical truth as a lens through which to examine how the world perceives Africa, too often reduced to a monolithic narrative, its vast diversity flattened into simplistic categories. The sculptures function as counter narratives, each form asserting its singularity while contributing to a larger constellation of meaning that within Africa, there is light and abundance. Like the pomegranate seeds themselves, these works speak to the generative power of the continent: a place that has long nourished the world with its resources, knowledge, and cultural wealth, yet whose contributions are frequently diminished or overlooked. The artist's geometric forms thus become vessels of correction, reframing Africa not as a place of lack but as a source of inexhaustible richness. Through this botanical metaphor made manifest in material and form, El Gotaibi insists upon complexity over simplification, upon recognition of the particular within the collective, upon the revolutionary act of seeing clearly what has always been present.

read more

Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures
in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures
in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023

SOLID LIGHT

Light becomes both subject and material in these sculptures, captured and fragmented through geometric forms that function as prisms of perception. As sunlight strikes the angular surfaces, it splinters into multiplicities, a physical enactment of how single sources give rise to infinite expressions. But El Gotaibi extends this investigation beyond the visual: smoke emerges from each sculpture, giving body to light itself, rendering visible what is ordinarily transparent. This transformation invokes an ancient practice, the smoke signal, humanity's earliest technology of communication across distance. Before written language traveled continents, before digital networks compressed space and time, smoke carried messages through air, a literacy of the sky read by those who understood its grammar. The artist reclaims this ancestral knowledge, positioning it not as primitive precursor but as sophisticated system, as testament to human ingenuity born from necessity and environmental attunement.

read more

SOLID LIGHT

Light becomes both subject and material in these sculptures, captured and fragmented through geometric forms that function as prisms of perception. As sunlight strikes the angular surfaces, it splinters into multiplicities, a physical enactment of how single sources give rise to infinite expressions. But El Gotaibi extends this investigation beyond the visual: smoke emerges from each sculpture, giving body to light itself, rendering visible what is ordinarily transparent. This transformation invokes an ancient practice, the smoke signal, humanity's earliest technology of communication across distance. Before written language traveled continents, before digital networks compressed space and time, smoke carried messages through air, a literacy of the sky read by those who understood its grammar. The artist reclaims this ancestral knowledge, positioning it not as primitive precursor but as sophisticated system, as testament to human ingenuity born from necessity and environmental attunement.

read more

SOLID LIGHT

Light becomes both subject and material in these sculptures, captured and fragmented through geometric forms that function as prisms of perception. As sunlight strikes the angular surfaces, it splinters into multiplicities, a physical enactment of how single sources give rise to infinite expressions. But El Gotaibi extends this investigation beyond the visual: smoke emerges from each sculpture, giving body to light itself, rendering visible what is ordinarily transparent. This transformation invokes an ancient practice, the smoke signal, humanity's earliest technology of communication across distance. Before written language traveled continents, before digital networks compressed space and time, smoke carried messages through air, a literacy of the sky read by those who understood its grammar. The artist reclaims this ancestral knowledge, positioning it not as primitive precursor but as sophisticated system, as testament to human ingenuity born from necessity and environmental attunement.

read more

Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures
in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures
in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION: Between day and night, these sculptures undergo a metamorphosis that reveals their dual nature as objects and experiences. In daylight, they assert themselves as material presences, solid forms that interrupt space, catch light, cast shadows that migrate across surrounding surfaces. The geometric precision of their construction speaks to human mastery of form, to the deliberate shaping of raw materials into structures of intention and meaning. Yet as darkness falls, the works transform: smoke becomes luminous against the night, geometric edges soften into atmospheric presence, and the sculptures evolve from static objects into dynamic events. This diurnal shift mirrors the cycles of the natural world, the rhythms that govern growth, rest, and regeneration. El Gotaibi's meditation on regeneration finds expression in this temporal dimension, the recognition that meaning is not fixed but fluid, that identity shifts according to context and light, that what we perceive depends upon when and how we look. Amy El Gotaibi

read more

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION: Between day and night, these sculptures undergo a metamorphosis that reveals their dual nature as objects and experiences. In daylight, they assert themselves as material presences, solid forms that interrupt space, catch light, cast shadows that migrate across surrounding surfaces. The geometric precision of their construction speaks to human mastery of form, to the deliberate shaping of raw materials into structures of intention and meaning. Yet as darkness falls, the works transform: smoke becomes luminous against the night, geometric edges soften into atmospheric presence, and the sculptures evolve from static objects into dynamic events. This diurnal shift mirrors the cycles of the natural world, the rhythms that govern growth, rest, and regeneration. El Gotaibi's meditation on regeneration finds expression in this temporal dimension, the recognition that meaning is not fixed but fluid, that identity shifts according to context and light, that what we perceive depends upon when and how we look. Amy El Gotaibi

read more

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION: Between day and night, these sculptures undergo a metamorphosis that reveals their dual nature as objects and experiences. In daylight, they assert themselves as material presences, solid forms that interrupt space, catch light, cast shadows that migrate across surrounding surfaces. The geometric precision of their construction speaks to human mastery of form, to the deliberate shaping of raw materials into structures of intention and meaning. Yet as darkness falls, the works transform: smoke becomes luminous against the night, geometric edges soften into atmospheric presence, and the sculptures evolve from static objects into dynamic events. This diurnal shift mirrors the cycles of the natural world, the rhythms that govern growth, rest, and regeneration. El Gotaibi's meditation on regeneration finds expression in this temporal dimension, the recognition that meaning is not fixed but fluid, that identity shifts according to context and light, that what we perceive depends upon when and how we look. Amy El Gotaibi

read more

Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures
in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
Illuminate the Light / Installation of 7 Corten steel sculptures
in the Somerset House Courtyard / 2023
3D artwork by Mouad Laalou, Courtesy of MCC GALLERY/Marrakech

Amine El Gotaibi

Copyright © 2025 Amine El Gotaibi

All rights reserved.

Amine El Gotaibi

Copyright © 2025 Amine El Gotaibi

All rights reserved.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2025 Amine El Gotaibi

Amine El Gotaibi