Amel Bennys Tunis, b. 1970

Amel Bennys is best known for her large-scale mixed media paintings and wood/metal sculptures that are inspired by her own memories and experiences. Whatever materials and processes Amel Bennys uses to create her artworks, the main force behind her art, which lies between painting, sculpture, installation, and writing, is the encounter and loss. Amel works through a layering of emotional responses to cope with a well-defined social environment, and the relationship she has with it. After she obtained her MFA from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, she was awarded "Les Etoiles de la Peinture", which resulted in an exhibition at the Maeght Galleries, Montrouge 1991 and Barcelona 1996. She took part in the exhibition "Hors les Murs" at Villa Medicis in 1999. In 2006, she participated in "Les Environnementales", the biennal of sculptures contemporary sculpture in Jouy-en-Josas, France. In 2013, she was invited by the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT. In 2013, she moved to the US and settles in Brooklyn, NY. In 2018, she had a solo exhibition at the Silas Von Morisse gallery in NY, followed by an exhibition at the Lehman College Museum in February 2019. The same year, she receives the Jackson Pollock - Lee Krasner Foundation Award.  In 2021, she is nominated by the Nasher Sculpture Center, Museum of Dallas, Texas. Her work has been featured in Le Monde Diplomatique, HuffPost, Daily Art Fair, ARTE/ FR3.  Her works are part of prestigious collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Agnès B, Kamel Lazaar Foundation,  Pascal Quignard, Foreign Ministry of France, Intervest Development Corp and the Ministry of Culture in Tunisia. 

In March 2019, she was arbitrarily banned from the United States by the Trump administration. Loss of the workplace and her New Yorker life. As if reality here then joined her artistic obsessions.