Across a wide range of media (drawing, video, photography, performance, scul pture, and installation), Adel Abdessemed transforms everyday materials and images into unexpected and charged artistic declarations. The Algerian artist pulls freely from myriad sources-personal, historical, social, and political-to create a visual language that is simultaneously rich and economical, sensitive and controversial, radical and mundane Premiered at his solo exhibition Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, Mémoire presents a video showing a baboon spelling out the words “Tutsi” and “Hutu” on a white wall, which refer to the names of the opposing ethnic groups involved in the 1994 Rwandan civil war and the ensuing devastating genocide. However, rather than a critique or justification of cruelty, the work displays the plain yet disturbing parallel between the simple, endlessly repeating acts of the baboon affixing letter magnets to the wall, and the violent act of mass murder.