Ismaïl Bahri studied art in Paris and in Tunis, his hometown. His work incorporates many cultural and aesthetic references, developing visual experiments that are both sensitive and precise. The results of these experiments take varying forms - drawings, videos, photographs, installations, and hybrids of these forms. The basic materials used in these works are manipulated and ultimately transformed, often through mechanically inspired gestures and procedures that are related, in one way or another, to cinema or photography. In the video Orientations (2010), for example, the artist filmed a stroll through Tunis by framing a glass filled with black ink that acted as a lens by reflecting the surroundings; this questioning of art's permeability with regards to the contemporary world is generated through a quasi-cinematic process based on principles of recording, motion, and simultaneous creation on a sensitive surface and a projection screen, while making use of laughably inadequate equipment. While the production of traces constitutes a revelatory act, Ismaïl Bahri equally privileges experiences that build on the organic and fleeting nature of things. The ordinary world's natural qualities slip away in a slow perpetual movement, remaining elusive. From the strange rituals invented by the artist, emerges a questioning of the limits of the visible and of perception itself.
He describes his works as "visual experiments" that take varying forms - drawings, videos, photographs, installations and hybrids of these. Dénouement (2011) was his first short film, and Foyer (2016) is his latest.