Phoenix Atala (FR/MA, 1977)
Residency period: May-June 2025
Based in Paris, Phoenix Atala is a trans, transversal, transdisciplinary Moroccan-French artist engaged in decolonial and queer practices, as well as speculative and transformative futures. His work explores, twists, and reimagines cinema, performance, speech practices, the genre of web series, and — as YoussSidiNix — hip hop, DJing, and more. More often than not, and increasingly so, Atala works in collective and collaborative settings.
He is currently a guest professor at the Institut Kunst Gender Natur HGK Basel FHNW, where he lead pedagogical experiments on queer temporality, collaborative practices, and decentralized production/show formats.
Following residencies at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, the Palais de Tokyo, and currently at La Becque, Phoenix Atala is unfolding a body of work that includes: Critical Failure, a meta-oriented SF film-conversation in which a queer, racialized community of android-resistant artists uses voguing as a tool for self-piracy and autodetermination; Queer Time, an autotuned spiral vocal performance that explores non-linear temporality through quantum leaps and bounds and فيلم ف العرايش (Film f L3rayesh), a speculative scenario grounded in North African temporalities, weaving together the experiences of three generations of artists in the fantasy of a utopian café — where book-swapping met cruising, music-listening, and mint tea drinking.
Phoenix Atala, La Becque, 2025, photo Aurélien Haslebacher