It was an identity crisis. I was born and raised in France, but I never really felt French, so I needed to find something that I was more connected to. I used to go back to Tunisia every summer, but I was more into the language, my Arabic roots.

eL Seed was inspired by the French play Le Cid by Pierre Corneille. It was seeing Le Cid coming from the Arabic name el sayed, which means the master, the man. So I called myself like that because I was 16 I said, Yes, I'm the man. That's how it started.

Sometimes the reading is related to something I do, sometimes it's not. I feel like every time I read something, there's a quote or something that comes [into the work] later. There's nothing that happens by coincidence. It's fate, I would say.

I've been working a lot with identity and roots, being part of your roots. I went into this topic where I was trying to break the stereotype of Arabic language. The non-translation work, this is where I make the switch, where you don't need to translate.

I'm more into the perception scope of a work I'm exploring this concept of perception and how people can look at someone, look at the community, and put in so much judgment, so much stereotype, so much misconception.

When actually, you have one identity made of different parts. Depending on where you are, at what time in your life, some things are higher or deeper. That's what I understood later: that I'm French and Tunisian, and I'm accepting the French part of my identity.

Art brings people back to their sensibility as human beings. This is the purpose of art: To bring people together and bring back the humanity as well.

I'm trying to create artwork that makes people, and myself, think about judgment as a reflex. This is something that must be changed.

Everywhere I've been, from South Africa to Brazil, people are connected to it. For me, art is a way to bring people together. You can put people on the same level, the perception is the same. You can bring a worker, like a cleaning guy, or the richest guy on earth, and they will have the same feeling or they would be able to feel the same.