Mohammed Arrhioui (b. 1995) lives and works in Casablanca (Morocco). Graduate from the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, Arrhioui was selected by the French Institute to carry out his first residency as part of the Resilience Lab program. His practice explores and captures the fragility and vulnerability of human beings. “Through the use of eggshells, I underline the vulnerability of human bodies plagued by incurable diseases”, dixit Arrhioui, “when my mother died after a long and brutal struggle with cancer, I chose this material to describe in my own way the physical and mental state of helplessness, of the fragility patients experience”. The skin, like broken eggshells, splits open and hints at disease. Pain, subjective and intimate, is influenced by diverse and cultural variables. In an artist’s statement Arrhioui wrote: “Suffering can be physical or mental, depending on whether it is related to a somatic or psychic process in an organism. The intensity of the suffering can occur in many degrees, from the insignificant trivial to the atrocious unbearable. Along with intensity, two other factors are often considered, duration and frequency of occurrence. Individuals' attitudes toward suffering can vary enormously, depending on whether they believe it is mild or severe, avoidable or unavoidable, helpful or unnecessary, deserved or undeserved, chosen or unintended, acceptable or unacceptable, of minor or serious consequences”. In his fragile allegorical works, the artist conveys the bodily manifestations of such pains in a most poetic ammner. ‘Transient Beings’ shows six new works created during Arrhioui’s residency at SAFFCA in Brussels earlier this year.