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Rachid Laachir

Rachid Laachir (°1986, Belgium) recei­ved his mas­ter’s degree in sce­no­grap­hy and cos­tu­me design from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 2009. He recei­ved the award for young emer­ging talent for his gra­du­a­ti­on work.

In recent years, he desig­ned and rea­li­zed the sce­no­grap­hy of numerous the­a­ter per­for­man­ces at home and abroad, inclu­ding for Troubleyn/​Jan Fabre, Marijs Boulogne, Thomas Bellinck, Ballet Dommage and Lotte van den Berg — just to name a few. In 2018, his work for Karolien Verlinde, Tuning People, het­pa­leis and Dschungel Vienna was nomi­na­ted for the Stella Prize for Best Scenography. From 2016 to 2018, he was res­pon­si­ble bri­ga­dier at Opera Ballet Flanders’ decoratelier.

Besides his work as a desig­ner, he is often invi­ted as an actor/​performer for various Belgian and European the­a­ter pro­duc­ti­ons, for (short, expe­ri­men­tal) fic­ti­on films and for music performances.

During his artis­tic tra­jec­to­ry, Rachid Laachir also cre­a­ted his own (the­a­tri­cal) per­for­man­ces — in which he also play­ed himself — which were shown in various fes­ti­vals, gal­le­ries and muse­ums. His per­for­man­ce expe­rien­ce covers a wide ran­ge of some­ti­mes unex­pec­ted forms and domains within the con­tem­po­ra­ry and audio­vi­su­al arts. His gene­ral inte­rest and his strong, radi­cal visu­al lan­gu­a­ge revol­ve around both the duality/​antagonism of human and natu­ral worlds, as well as the (soci­al) evo­lu­ti­on of homo sapiens in rela­ti­on to his often nega­ti­ve inter­ac­ti­on with ani­ma­li­ty and nature.