Who is Anhar Salem the winner of the 2025 Reiffers Art Initiatives prize?

by Jonathan Llense.

Anhar Salem wins the 2025 Reiffers Art Initiatives prize

Since 2022, the Reiffers Art Initiatives fund has awarded a prize each year to a promising young artist selected by its artistic committee. The winner receives a €10,000 grant and a commissioned piece that will become part of the fund’s collection.

Following in the footsteps of previous recipients Pol Taburet, Ser Serpas, and Clédia Fourniau, this year Anhar Salem has been recognized for the powerful relevance of her video work, which explores the perils of image proliferation in the digital age and the new dynamics of power and alienation it generates.

Until May 10, she is presenting a new film and installation in the exhibition “1000 milliards d’images” by Reiffers Art Initiatives in Paris, alongside the other prize finalists: Jean-Vincent Simonet, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, and Nanténé Traoré.

Interview with Anhar Salem

Numéro art: The exhibition opens with a new video—one that seems deeply personal. What’s the story behind it?

Anhar Salem: It’s a video I shot on my iPhone, in my bedroom, during what could be called a psychotic or manic episode. A moment of acute awareness of my body, its presence and reality.

You filmed yourself using your phone—like so many of your generation—almost as if it were a Snapchat or TikTok. You often explore how social media affects self-representation…

Exactly. I’m interested in the accessibility of tools like the iPhone camera that allow us to represent ourselves. Even in a manic episode, I’ll use my phone, I’ll appear on the screen, move in front of it. The time I spend in front of the screen and camera stretches out. The sensations are intensified by the intensity of what I’m going through.

I recorded for half an hour, though the final video is only a few minutes long. It became a reflection on the strangeness of the reality we live in—a world flooded with images, obsessed with individualism. It was a moment of contemplation.

But the video we see has been altered. You appear as a digital avatar…

Yes, I used AI to rework the iPhone footage. My use of AI is very basic—just prompts, like anyone could use. But the result has that distinct “AI” aesthetic we all recognize. That style isn’t random; it reflects the decisions made by the companies behind the technology…

…Trained largely on drawings, fashion, and ads—creating a clean, polished look with nothing disturbing.

Exactly. AI is ultimately a tool of mass media reproduction. It’s not “intelligent.” It just reproduces what it’s been trained to. So it’s all about the choices made by the companies developing these “intelligences.”

AI is ultimately a tool of mass media reproduction. It’s not “intelligent.” It just reproduces what it’s been trained to. So it’s all about the choices made by the companies developing these “intelligences.”

-Anhar Salem

The installation that closes the exhibition consists of wallpaper covering an entire wall, a video embedded in it, and a sculpture behind it that occasionally emits a poem. What does it evoke?

It plays on the verticality of images on social media—like TikTok or Instagram Reels. We’ve become used to scrolling vertically. The video is a stream of footage from the internet and social media, edited to flow vertically like water from a fountain—literally overlaid with a torrent of water sweeping the clips along.

From afar, the wallpaper resembles something divine or religious. But up close, it’s a mosaic of tech company logos and office buildings.

I’m not saying tech companies are the new religion—that’s too simplistic. The images—like pixels—form a larger whole. They show how tech giants choose to represent themselves: logos with blue skies, headquarters nestled in lush gardens… A fantasy far removed from the reality of their actions.

They also produce technology for war and the military. I’m more interested in how these companies construct narratives and symbolic images—how they depict paradise or an ideal world. It echoes how religions have done the same. And the military too—it’s another institution with its own imagery and myths.

These stories, sourced from your online research, shape how we see the world. They flood us with images and fantasies.

Yes. Each one presents a version of paradise. But what does “paradise” even mean in our lives?

So your work is less about tech or religion per se than about how power defines narratives and visual codes…

Absolutely.

Anhar Salem’s works can be seen in “1000 milliards d’images”, running from April 16 to May 10, 2025, at Reiffers Art Initiatives, Paris 17th.