Karim Boumjimar (born 1998, Spain) draws inspiration from history, myth, and subconscious forces. Ceramics and painting are currently central to this multidisciplinary artist’s practice.
Working with clay – one of humanity’s oldest artistic materials, carrying stories and beliefs that span millennia – Boumjimar uses this time-honoured medium to explore both ancient and contemporary themes, from human and societal imperfections to the liminal spaces and boundaries that shape our lives.
His cast of characters is wild, raw, and unapologetic, encompassing humans as well as an imaginative array of creatures, animals, and mythical beings. These figures intertwine, merging into hybrid forms that blur the boundaries between species. With empathy and curiosity, the artist examines the coexistence of these diverse life forms.
The exhibition premieres the video Traces of Spring, in which Boumjimar himself appears, surrendering to a ritual-like connection with nature, particularly with earth and water. His work reminds us that we are made of the same material: we come from the earth, and to the earth we will one day return.
Animals
Boumjimar’s works are rich in animal symbolism. His creatures embody instinct and other-than-human energies.
Often read as symbols of transition, birds feature prominently in his imagery. Peacocks hold special significance for the artist: highly charged symbols of splendor, extravagance, and erotic display, they are also associated with immortality in many cultures.
Some human figures and imagery draw inspiration from club culture, where bodies dissolve through music, sweat, and intimacy, then reassemble in a communal, shared ritual. In this context, the peacock’s theatricality becomes a metaphor for self-expression and desire.
The decorated surfaces teem with fish. Living in water – a symbol of life’s origins and the subconscious – fish evoke mystery, hidden emotions, and dreams. They swim with or against the current, representing both conformity and resistance. Boumjimar’s art explores the tension between these two strategies of response.
The artist describes identity as being water-like: ever-flowing, ever-changing. By exploring underwater themes, he also addresses the pollution of our moral environment. Society is governed by visible and invisible rules that dictate how we are allowed to love, move, and exist. Boumjimar’s works position themselves outside these structures, stretching them until they begin to dissolve. In his art, alternative ways of living are proposed and celebrated.
Pots
Karim Boumjimar often works with traditional urn-like shapes in his sculptures, hand-moulding each piece from clay. Their painted surfaces, often enhanced with glazes, are central to his ceramic vocabulary. A deep sense of connection with the earth is vital for Boumjimar. Working with clay offers him a direct, tangible way to explore materiality, touch, and embodiment. Ceramics is a medium that inherently merges several elements: earth and water are transformed into something durable through fire.
Fired clay objects are remarkably long-lasting. Some survive thousands of years, with the earliest pottery fragments dating back to 20,000–18,000 BCE. Among the oldest known human-made artifacts, their shapes and materials embody continuity, cultural heritage, and layers of memory.
A pot is a humble, everyday object – yet throughout history, urns have also served ritual purposes as sacrificial, burial, or reliquary vessels. In this sense, an urn is at once mundane and sacred.
At its core, a pot is designed to hold things. Boumjimar’s works can be read as metaphors for the body and mind as receptacles. They invite reflection on what we carry inside ourselves – our secrets, our hidden desires, and the things we choose to keep from the world.
Queer Ecologies
In this elongated work on paper, the bodies of humans and other creatures intertwine as part of a rich entanglement. The composition teems with scales, fur, genitals, eyes, and other bodily fragments that merge with their underwater environment. Sexuality is ever-present in Boumjimar’s art as a powerful, multidirectional, multifaceted, and transformative force, and this aspect of his work is particularly evident here.
Bright colours and shifting scales, positions, situations, and perspectives converge and overlap, forming a fluid and malleable narrative. Hybrid creatures, underwater beings, and non-binary bodies move across the paper from end to end, becoming inseparably intertwined and reshaping one another. Although much power resides in this condition of entanglement, the work also reminds us that social structures can wound those who deviate from the norm. The artist describes the work as a cry for freedom.
Myth
Myths are traditional stories, often originating in ancient times and passed down orally. They typically explore fundamental human questions, from mortality to the origins of the world. The mythical creatures and events portrayed in Boumjimar’s works are not merely allusions to past eras or storytelling traditions. They also offer a way of approaching primordial forces and complex themes such as desire, ecstasy, death, otherness, and metamorphosis.
Many of Boumjimar’s titles similarly allude to myth. Dionysian Demon invokes Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility, wine, and ecstatic transformation. The term “Dionysian” suggests not only celebration, but also the dissolution of identity, collective trance, and animalistic power. In this context, a demon is not necessarily a malevolent being, but rather an inner spirit or force that takes possession.
Elysian Dolls, in turn, refers to Elysium, the place of peace and light that follows death in Greek mythology. When paired with “dolls” – the affectionate term used in the LGBTQ+ community for glamorous transgender women – a tension emerges between playfulness and the afterlife.
Erect Labyrinth introduces the archetype of the labyrinth into Boumjimar’s network of references. A labyrinth can be both a physical structure and a psychological state: a place of disorientation, searching, and transformation. It suggests movement toward the centre and back again, in a kind of ritual journey.