After having trained as an architect, Algerian artist, Driss Ouadahi (b. 1959, Casablanca, Morroco) immigrated from post-colonial North Africa to study painting at the renowned Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Germany. Influenced by his lived experience as an émigré he has developed a unique visual vocabulary – a synthesis of structural design and modernist grid painting – which he uses to explore the social, political and psychological aspects of boundaries and the possibility of transcending them.

Driss Ouadahi was born in Morocco in 1959 to parents who were Algerian political exiles. His work was exhibited in the Cairo Biennial in 2010 and The Future of a Promise: Contemporary Art from the Arab World during the 2011 Venice Biennale. He was awarded the grand prize at the Dakar Biennale in 2014. His work has been exhibited and collected internationally, including in Dubai, New York, North Africa and throughout Europe.