Each of Nicène Kossentini’s works presents an opportunity to experience a fictive space that is at once close, yet uncertain. Playing with black and white contrasts and zones of semi-visibility, the artist creates singular and minimalist environments. Her photographs and videos track the traces of sites and faces on the verge of disappearance. Within these temporal landscapes, Kossentini not only evokes her personal notions of home – which she describes as ‘secret gardens’, but also evokes the secret gardens that may reside in each one of us. This metaphorical conception invites the spectator to plunge into an indecisive world between presence and absence, between forgetting and remembering.

Kossentini’s work has been shown at the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany; Gwangju Museum of Art in Gwangju, South Korea: The National Museum of Bahrain in Manama, Bahrain; Museum of Tunis and Kheireddine Palace in Tunis, Tunisia; National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow, Russia; Museum of Contemporary Art in Algiers, Algeria; and Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain.