Mohamed Bourouissa. Communautés

The exhibition

The largest solo exhibition ever held in Italy of the French-Algerian artist Mohamed Bourouissa: four series tracing twenty years of work, from his early days to the present.

Well-known and unseen works – photographs, films and objects made from industrial materials – follow two decades of research. Communautés also looked at how photography is changing today, and at the relationship between individuals and society in a time of deep change.

Bourouissa works on the roles each of us plays as an individual, as a member of a community and as part of a larger mass. His works focus on marginalised or forgotten communities, from the residents of the French banlieues to the riders of Philadelphia’s community stables, and give them back a leading role.

The four series

Périphérique 2005–2008: The series that made Bourouissa known worldwide. Made after the 2005 riots in the French banlieues, the pictures borrow the codes of painting and stage moments of danger and tension, with friends and acquaintances as non-professional actors. They make visible people who usually stay on the margins of history.
Horse Day 2013–2019: The community stables of a Philadelphia suburb, founded by members of the local African American community. Bourouissa takes apart the image of the cowboy: these riders were left out of American equestrian culture by biases fed by Hollywood films and the myth of the conquest of the West. Photographs of the stables and their riders are printed on car body parts, linking the custom of dressing up horses with that of customising cars and pick-ups.
Shoplifters 2014: At the entrance of a Brooklyn supermarket, the manager put up photographs of people caught stealing small items, posed with what they had tried to take. Bourouissa transforms these accusing pictures: the triviality of the goods acquits the people in them and exposes the consumerist poverty of society.
Hands 2025, shown for the first time at MAST: His most recent project: images taken from earlier series, reprinted on Plexiglas and set against a metal grid. The hands and gestures overlap the grids, a symbol of control and coercion, and build a strong sense of tension.

Works and rooms

A young man on horseback, the horse draped in a cape of red and white ribbons, in front of piles of cardboard — Mohamed Bourouissa, work shown in Communautés

Work by Mohamed Bourouissa: hands and gestures on a blue ground, crossed by a grid — Mohamed Bourouissa, work from the Hands series

Exhibition room with large photographs from the Périphérique series on white walls — Communautés at MAST: the Périphérique room

Horse Day photographic sculptures: photographs printed on car body parts, hung on a white wall — Communautés at MAST: the Horse Day photographic sculptures

Exhibition room with framed photographs hung on white wire-mesh walls — Communautés at MAST: the Shoplifters room

Works from the Hands series on Plexiglas, resting against a white metal grid — Communautés at MAST: the Hands series

Videos and interviews

Tours, families, summer camps

Guided tours

Free, on booking, from 3 June to 28 September 2025: Thursdays at 6 pm, followed by a drink in MAST.Caffetteria; Saturdays at 11 am, 4 pm and 5 pm; Sundays at 11 am and 4 pm. Up to 20 people, about 60 minutes.

Family Tour Day

On Sundays, for 15 children aged 6 to 11 with their parents: meeting at 2.45 pm at the Gallery desk (level 1), a tour of the exhibition, a workshop inspired by Horse Day in MAST.Club and a snack in MAST.Caffetteria at 4.30 pm. Parents joined the tour and the workshop.

Education: families

Summer 2025 for summer camps

From 10 June, Tuesday to Friday, 10 am – 12.30 pm: a snack, a visit to the technology Gallery and the exhibition, then a workshop. For children and teenagers aged 6 to 14 from public and private summer camps, free on booking. Four workshops:

Tutta mia la città (The whole city is mine) · from Périphérique
A topographic map, a virtual exploration and a small guidebook to lesser-known neighbourhoods.

Horse Day · from Horse Day
Like Bourouissa for the Horse Tuning Expo party in Philadelphia, a poster inviting friends, classmates and neighbours to the exhibition.

Dentro, fuori, oltre le immagini (Inside, outside, beyond the image) · from Hands
With handheld scanners, a collage of dreams, plans and obstacles within the edges of the sheet.

Altri sguardi (Other ways of looking) · from Shoplifters
Identikits combining the real faces of the photographed customers with imagined stories.

Mohamed Bourouissa
Communautés