Lina Laraki was born in 1991 in Casablanca in Morocco. She lives and works in France.
Lina Laraki is a film director and visual artist graduated from Central Saint Martins (2014) and Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains (2022). Her practice probes obscure themes exploring the ambivalence of nature and human experiences.
She expands the experience of cinema through sensorial representations. Her films have been shown internationally, that includes Karama at 1:54 Art Fair, UK in 2017 - The Last Observer at Sheffield DocFest, UK in 2021, Halves Through Night at Fantasia IFF, Canada in 2022. Her latest film Shinigami was awarded the Renato & Christine Casciani prize (Around Video Art Fair) in France in 2022.
Following a form of speculative investigation focused on the diverse mental states coupled with anatomical medicine in the face of institutional violence, Lina Laraki would like to examine the way madness was identified and treated in the great gloomy madhouse of La Salpêtrière in the 19th century, and relate it to our contemporary approach of what is considered marginal behaviors and mental disability. The core idea of this project lies in the diversion of the classification system of definitions of madness through elaborated characters, role plays and inverted situations in which narration becomes layered and complex. This new piece of work will be the continuation of her practice, which is led by rhizome thoughts on human deviances (social, behavioral or mental) and their marginalizations from functioning society.