Rachid Khimoune was born in France in 1953 in Decazeville (in the department of Aveyron) and his parents were of Berberian origin. He obtained a higher-education degree from L'Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris in 1974, and started by painting before he turned to sculpture.

Since 1975, Rachid Khimoune is represented in several museums, in public and private collections in France and abroad, where his numerous, monumental creations are on exhibition.
"His memory was seized by the visual virtuality of the unlimited spoken word, and this vital eclecticism translates, with no subterfuge, the universality of a language derived from a very personal stenography based on instinct." Pierre Restany, Art Critic, 1995.

Rachid Khimoune's universe: an imaginary world, overflowing with real or imaginary animals, made with bundles of objects from everyday life, which he calls his "Bestiary", internationally-recognised by the art critics.
Rachid Khimoune has been to many large towns in the world so that he could collect samples of the "streets' skins".

"You would think that all of the pavements in the world are alike and yet, from one city to another, the grids around the trees and the manhole covers are distinct signs, like tattoos, which reveal their identity, sometimes even their history. I would have moulded the words Water-Gas-Drainage-Electricity in to all the languages of the world."

Installed in Paris in 2001, "Les Enfants du Monde" ("The Children of the World") sculptures is one of Rachid Khimoune's major collections. In his "Prise de Tête" series made up of switches and light bulbs, the artist assesses walls and poetically brings together these common objects that we absent-mindedly use everyday.