Saïd Afifi was born in 1983 in Casablanca.
A graduate of the Institut national des Beaux-Arts in Tétouan in 2008, he joined the Chantal Akerman cohort at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains from 2016 to 2018.
His practice, which combines video, installation and virtual reality, was initially shaped by a research into postmodern architecture, nourished by postmodern thought as well as by certain modernist and experimental architectural forms. More recently, his work has turned towards questions related to natural landscape, biomimicry and the impact of contemporary technologies on our perception of the world.
In 2018, he presented at Le Fresnoy the immersive installation Yemaya, a virtual reality work accompanied by five drawings. Using scientific images of Mediterranean underwater caves captured through photogrammetry, the artist reconstructs a three-dimensional environment, inviting the viewer into a journey between document and fiction.
His work has been presented notably at the Biennale of Young Creators of Europe and the Mediterranean in Skopje (2010), the Vidéoformes Festival in Clermont-Ferrand (2013), the exhibition Le Maroc contemporain at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris (2015), Panorama 19 and Panorama 20 at Le Fresnoy (2017–2018), the Rabat Biennale (2019) and the Beirut Art Fair (2019).
Saïd Afifi lives and works between France and Morocco.