About

Karim Boumjimar is an alchemist, turning flesh into clay and permanence into transience. Karim has created a monumental installation featuring large-scale ceramic vases on a staircase-like stage. The vases climb towards the ceiling, in an ascent reminiscent of the stairs in Roman theaters. Indeed, the classical trace is present across Karim’s work as he brings the age-old tradition of earthenware to a contemporary vernacular. His vessels, adorned with intricate illustrations, tell stories of fleeting encounters from his life – nightlife, clubs, cruising sites, and smoking areas – interwoven with historical and mythological figures. Together, these figures dance and flirt, uninhibited by constraints.

In Karim’s world, some of the characters depicted on the vases, a tattooed lady he met in the smoking area at Dalston superstore, meets Napoleon, standing boldly in his signature hat. It is a fantastical world of chance encounters; at every turn, a myth awaits. Like a finger impression on bare skin, the vessels contain traces of touch and feel, turning these solid ceramics into organic forms. The vases are also vessels of memory (bodily memory in particular), holding imprints of bodies and spaces on the margins. As in Karim’s larger practice, these works reference the fleeting nature of queer existence, where bodies meet in liminal spaces safe from oppressive and harmful heteronormative structures.

In Karim’s Augang composition, sculptural forms emerge through layering and incision. Built up through coiling, the surfaces are then sliced and scored, revealing figures and motifs embedded within the clay. This method—both additive and subtractive—creates a sense of movement, as if each mark is an echo of something shifting just beneath the surface. The gestures cut through the material like memory etched into skin, leaving behind impressions of bodies, encounters, and rhythms.

More can be found on his website: https://www.karimboumjimar.com/