EXHIBITION
EXHIBITION OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
FROM JUNE 2nd TO SEPTEMBER 30th, 2023
EVERY DAY FROM 10AM TO 6PM
For its 7th edition, Dabaphoto programme initiated by LE 18 joins forces with Dada Marrakech to take a closer look at still and moving images, animation, 3D and everything that today that extends our gaze beyond two-dimensional matter to tell stories from within and beyond borders. The new Some of Us festival enhances this proposition with its vision of video and the digital image.
Photographers and image-makers from Morocco and its diaspora looking at each other, crossing paths, confronting gazes, to tell together and individually, a story of life or that of a family, a furtive nostalgia, a projection into the future or into a collective imagination, spaces and identities recomposed, sometimes resisting the fixed image and by this gesture to be fixed in a representation. They seek to reconsider the present, potential futures and even futurism.
Far from a political discourse, and what isn’t, the image-makers, consciously or unconsciously, distil truths that escape our eyes, because how can we see everything when we are conditioned to see only what we believe, or the opposite? These viewers, fixers and creators bring all the dimensions of a photography that tells a story of Moroccanness that is fragmented, complex and under construction, with stories that come to us from elsewhere to add to what we thought was already complete. This is our condition. We are the missing piece of history. We can only build on this premise, that of being in front of and inside this gap.
Coram, both an anagram and a palindrome of Maroc, which in Latin means in the presence of or in front of, suggests the photographer’s double posture of being and seeing, living and capturing. As an extension of the medium, it anticipates what the image has already captured.
These artists – craftsmen of the image – are in tune with the passing of time. Not in the trendy, just the furtive, the dynamic, the elusive real.
They write about lost time without nostalgia, but with questions that require clarification, or with narratives that clarify, explore or anticipate. The exhibition here is an opportunity to highlight the practices that are taking place; languages that are emancipated or conditioned by contexts and resources; embodied and real, sometimes demanding, committed, poetic or amorous. The non-exhaustive nature of the exhibition allows us to see what lies in the shadows of the visible and the invisible. It invites us to wander between the still and moving images, suggesting the more and the interstices of the worlds they represent.
Louisa Ben born in Toulouse in 1996 into a Franco-Moroccan family originally from Tiznit. She lives in Paris, where she works as a photographer for daily newspapers and magazines. Her series Yelli (My daughter in Tamazight) questions both her origins and the representations of a youth caught between two countries, between a Here and an Elsewhere.
Meriem Bennani born in Rabat in 1988. She has lived and worked in New York since 2009. Her artistic practice combines digital media and installations. Her trilogy Life on CAPS, which includes the video Guided tour of a Spill, is set in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on a fantastical island between two worlds.
Inès Bouallou born in 1994 in Salé. Her photography is part of a militant feminist approach to the deconstruction of gendered forms. She is a member of the feminist collective Nassawiyat. The series Closure and Rencontre presented here explore her troubled relationship with her double, the embodiment of an irreducible antagonism.
Karim El Maktafi born in 1992 in Desenzano del Garda, Italy. He lives in Milan, where he works as a documentary photographer. His Hayati series is autobiographical, drawing as much on documents recounting his return trips to Morocco as on family archives. Presented here with the Ghorba series, made up of portraits of immigrant workers.
Muhcine Ennou born in Rabat in 1991 and grew up in Salé. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam, where his practice, which began with graphic arts and then photography, has since evolved into 3D and video. His video Bliss shows one of his futuristic dreamscapes of a sometimes utopian virtual world.
Rida Tabit born in 1996 in Marrakech, the city where he lives. His photographic practice aims to document the reality of his city and country from the inside, focusing on the friction between individuals and significant spaces. Rida Tabit questions the tourist imagination, participating in a generational reappropriation of the imaginary places where people live.
Ali El Madani aka Rwina Life born in 1987 in Casablanca. A graphic arts professional, he is a self-taught photographer of the Casablanca spirit, enamoured of his city and of poetry, which he freely integrates as aphorisms or declarations of love, in Arabic and English.
Jinane Ennasri born in 1996 in Taza. She lives in New York, where she works in photo journalism. Her job gives her the opportunity to return to Morocco, and to document her travels by focusing on the simple manifestations of everyday life, presented here in her Hess L’Bled series.
Hind Moumou born in Rabat in 1995. The poetry of her photography conjures up potential narratives from traces and absences, ruins and deserted nocturnal spaces, portraits from behind and the passage of time. She invites us to grasp snatches of reality in the mystery of its evanescence.
Ismail Zaidy born in 1997 in Marrakech. Trained as a graphic designer, he appropriates photography as a language to modulate his emotions and dreams, which he stages with his sister and brother, who collaborate as models. Their video collage with Fatima Zahra Serri is a visual correspondence based on Instagram archives.
Fatimazohra Serri born in Nador in 1995. A self-taught photographer, her carefully thought-out stagings on the terrace of the family home have enabled her to construct an inventive universe that cleverly overturns conservative clichés of all kinds. Their video collage with Ismail Zaidy is a visual correspondence based on archives.
