Maher Maaoui (b. 1982, Tunis) is a painter and visual artist based in Paris. His practice has developed through successive pictorial investigations into perception, image, memory and the emergence of form.

A significant stage in this development was Decryption, a process based on observing and enlarging photographic and video images. Rather than seeking greater documentary precision, enlargement exposed tonal transitions and visual uncertainties that required decisions: selecting boundaries, translating them into lines, and allowing those lines to enter the painting. Through repeated use, this analytical process progressively became less dependent on enlargement itself.

Alongside this approach, works developed through the Suddenly process foreground immediacy, gesture and emotional emergence. Over time, these initially distinct approaches began to intersect: photographic sources, remembered images, gestures, colours and unanticipated forms increasingly coexist within the same paintings.

Recent works and experiments extend these questions. His work has been exhibited in France and internationally