At the crossroads of digital, craftmanship and installation art, Marwan Sekkat develops an artistic practice in which mistakes become the subject of creation. He hijacks the codes of technology, explores glitch and questions the transmission of knowledge through works that blend experimental aesthetics and sensitivity. His work, deeply rooted in a reflection on identity, memory and misappropriation, draws on a variety of media: digital simulation, traditional Moroccan embroidery and interactive objects. By confronting the artificial and the organic, heritage and modernity, he constructs a singular visual language that questions our relationship with progress and the ruptures of the contemporary world.

A journey between digital technology and experimentation

Since childhood, Marwan Sekkat has been immersed in an artistic environment, nurtured by visits to museums and creative hobbies encouraged by his mother. However, when he embarked on his studies, he initially turned towards a more specialized field, opting for audiovisual training. This exploration of the tools and processes associated with image and sound marks the starting point of his practice.

How did you begin to use art as a means of expression?
“I’ve always been surrounded by the arts. My mother used to take me to museums, and I did a lot of creative activities. I studied audiovisual techniques to become a freelance performer, then worked in digital imaging and development. I’ve always had a parallel artistic practice, but in 2022, I decided to go full-time.”

As his academic and professional career continued, he increasingly explored digital images, code mapping and microcontrollers, tools that enabled him to play with the shapes and textures of the digital environment. Digital became his preferred medium, a material he learned to deconstruct, divert and manipulate.

After completing his master’s degree, he worked for a while as a virtual reality developer in a company, while continuing to pursue experimental art projects in parallel. With his friends, he founded Croco Deal Dunil, a collective of artists united around their shared desire to experiment with digital and multimedia arts.

What was the project behind Croco Deal Dunil?
“ It started out as a joke! But in the end, we really built an artistic approach around digital art. We wanted to start from digital to produce concrete, physical things. ”

The summer of 2022 marked a new chapter in his career: he quit his job to devote himself entirely to his artistic practice. Together with Croco Deal Dunil, he organized his first self-produced exhibition, Impossible de tout voir, presenting six individual works as well as a joint project which gave its name to the exhibition. He then began to structure a body of work around his explorations of error, glitch and transmission.

Credits: Julie Chalhoub, Katya Konioukhova

A dialogue between digital, craftsmanship and identity

His personal background also influences his artistic approach. Of French-Moroccan origin, he questions his relationship with these two cultures through his work.

How does being at the crossroads of two cultures influence your artistic practice?
“ When you’re trying to tell a story, you always end up drawing from within yourself. I come from a digital background, but I wanted to work with materiality, so I turned to Moroccan crafts. It’s also part of a personal and cultural quest. As I don’t speak Arabic, I’m at a distance from the culture, and crafts are a way of accessing it. I’d like to learn directly from craftsmen.“

His current work explores traditional Fassi embroidery, a craft that originated in Fez, Morocco. He is interested in how these geometric motifs can be digitized and repurposed. This approach, which blends modern techniques and craftsmanship, reflects his desire to explore the notion of transmission, to create bridges between past and present, between ancestral savoir-faire and contemporary aesthetics.

His relocation to Quebec also transformed his view of colonial dynamics. Initially focused on the France-Morocco story, once in North America he became aware of other post-colonial realities.

Did your arrival in Quebec enrich your decolonial thinking?
“Yes, it made me aware of the colonial context in America, a subject much less discussed in Europe. I also reflected on the difference between my immigration and that of my father, who left Morocco for France. It gave me a more global vision of migration and the relationship with the French-speaking world.”

Key influences: glitch art and distortion

While his personal background shapes his themes, his artistic references provide him with an aesthetic and conceptual framework.

Are there any artists or movements that have influenced you over the course of your career?
“Yes, very much so! I was particularly influenced by the Glitch Art Collective, a movement born in the 2000s that brings together artists exploring the glitch aesthetic. It was when I came across their work that I started experimenting with error and image distortion.”

While looking for resources on this practice, he discovered Jacques Perconte, a French artist renowned for his use of datamoshing, a technique that involves digitally distorting videos by exploiting compression errors.

“For me, Jacques Perconte is the master of glitch. He creates what I call ‘boiled pixels’, a complete deconstruction of the image. I saw an exhibition of his work in France last summer, and it was massive.”

Why are error and glitch so present in your work?
“Glitch reveals the “matrix” of digital images. When an image glitches, it reveals its skeleton. I don’t have total control over the final rendering: I run the program, and the computer generates glitches for me. There’s something interesting about this co-creation with the machine.”

A future under construction: towards more ambitious installations

Today, Marwan Sekkat is in the midst of structuring his artistic career. He is looking to develop more ambitious installations, find artistic residencies and build a coherent body of work for a solo exhibition.

What are your plans and ambitions for the future?
“I’d like to produce a consistent solo exhibition that brings together my research into digital, craft and transmission. I want to structure my work so that it’s readable and accessible, while remaining true to my approach.”

With his installations that question the relationship between human and technology, error and creation, memory and transmission, he is part of a dynamic of experimentation and reflection on our digital and material world.

Although his path is still under construction, he moves forward with determination, driven by his curiosity and his desire to push his experiments ever further.