I Mutanti (The Mutants) is the complete catalogue of the exhibition of the same name held at The French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici. The five featured conceptual artists, or “mutants”, are prophets whose work provides a visionary perspective into a world that we do not yet know, where identity is indefinite. Adel Abdessemed, Stephen Dean, Ellen Gallagher, Adrian Paci and Djamel Tatah are the innovative artists that bring the future of art to the pages of this catalogue.

The subject omnipresent in Djamel Tatah’s works is the silent figure: the mirror of all humankind, pain, solitude, melancholy, war and peace. Featured in isolation, pairs or in repetition across large canvases or polyptychs, the silhouettes are consistently depicted in a 1:1 scale. They seldom face the viewer directly, instead they are found gazing upwards, downwards or far into the distance. The works have no title, bringing to the fore issues of identity.