Salim Bayri (b. Casablanca 1992) makes sculptures in virtual reality while listening to obsolete online chatrooms where strangeness, blasphemy, and pulling each other's leg are common practices. As a polyglot, Bayri can enter many of the different rooms where diasporas gather.
Salim is rooted in what he calls, a 'Hadra1 Collider' (also spelled: '7adra Collider' or '8adra Collider') - a conceptual device he coined referring to the Large Hadron Collider which imagines a particle accelerator built inside his throat.
By adding tongues and making words strike each other, he hopes to find the particle-x in languages and thereby answer questions related to cultural violence. He materializes this physically by disrupting materials such as sand, bread and 3D printed cork. He performs it in narrative situations using technological devices. He makes it audible through vocalizing narrative and creates sonic rhythms with his brother Tayeb in the music duo BAZOGA.
8adra (الهضرة) in Moroccan Darija means 'talk'.
7adra (حضرة) means 'procession'.
Hadra is a made-up word in between the first two meanings.
Salim Bayri went to the Rijksakademie (NL), holds a BA in Arts and Design from the Escola Massana (CAT) and a MA in Media, Art, Design and Technology from the Frank Mohr Institute (NL). He's been nominated for the Amsterdam Prijs Voor de Kunst and the Vordemberge Gildewart Award. He is currently based in Amsterdam and is supported by Galerie Van Gelder.