30 Facts About Ben Heine

Ben Heine is a Belgian multidisciplinary visual artist and music producer.

Ben Heine is an accomplished illustrator and photographer, Ben Heine is the creator of other original art series such as "Digital Circlism" and "Flesh and Acrylic".

Ben Heine was born in 1983 in Ivory Coast and currently lives and works in Belgium.

Ben Heine's creations have been featured in newspapers, magazines and major publications worldwide and since 2010 his works have begun to populate art galleries and museums in Europe, Asia and Russia.

Ben Heine started producing and composing music in 2012 and plays drums and the piano.

Ben Heine's father was a commercial engineer and his mother a choreographer and a dance teacher.

Between 1988 and 2006, Ben Heine undertook studies in different countries, including Ivory Coast, Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands.

Ben Heine attended primary school at Notre Dame de La Trinite in Brussels.

In 2007, Ben Heine earned a degree in Journalism, started at Universite Libre de Bruxelles and completed at IHECS and Utrecht University of Applied Sciences.

Between 2007 until the end of 2009, Ben Heine worked in different fields to make a living, as a copywriter in a communication agency in Belgium and later as a language teacher and coach in different schools around Brussels.

The inclusion of hand-held penciled sketches over a portion of the original photos allows Ben Heine to enhance reality and open doors to an imaginary world.

Ben Heine brought some innovations to the concept in 2012 adding colors and black paper.

Between 2010 and 2016, Ben Heine's creations have been seen by the people through the exhibitions and news articles in major media outlets.

Ben Heine takes pictures of the final composition so that they can be printed and exhibited later on.

Ben Heine made his first "Flesh and Acrylic" project with model Caroline Madison in 2011 for a documentary filmed by Italian director Davide Gentile.

Between 2012 and 2015, Ben Heine made several Flesh and Acrylic live performances.

Ben Heine says he is influenced by Belgian Surrealism, German Expressionism, American Pop Art, and Social Realism.

Traditionally trained in journalism and communications at IHECS Journalism School, Ben Heine tried his hand at political cartoons because he wanted to connect his interest in art with his studies in Journalism.

In 2006, at the end of his scholarship and just after the Muhammad cartoon contest controversy, Ben Heine made a master's final assignment, which included a detailed investigation about the "Limits of Freedom of Expression in Political Cartooning".

At that time, Ben Heine was member of many cartoonists and activists associations.

Ben Heine asked all websites that published his political images to permanently remove them because he said these drawings lacked nuance and intelligence and they kept generating confusion about his evolution as a non-political artist.

Ben Heine said he made such mistakes because he was too young and didn't have objective information.

Ben Heine wrote an open letter in 2010 to beg pardon to the Jewish Community, to express his regrets and apologize for the mess and pain this event had generated.

Ben Heine made clear he was against revisionism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

Ben Heine explained the academic context in which he was, how cartoon organizations had manipulated his drawings, how he lost control of the situation and how much this issue had caused him troubles.

Since 2009, Ben Heine has firmly distanced himself from all activists' organizations.

Ben Heine started creating electronic music, writing songs, singing and composing in 2011.

Ben Heine bought a professional creative studio in Belgium since 2012.

In 2014, Ben Heine started to collaborate with other musicians and singers including pianist Thibault Crols and Saxophonist Stephane Pigeon.

In 2015, Ben Heine music was played publicly for the first time at Moscow Planetarium, at the National Museum of Arkhangelsk and in 2016 at Tyumen Fine Art Museum in the frame of his itinerant solo exhibition in Russia.