ahwak

2016 - Ongoing

The plurality of my cultural identities made me grow up at the intersection of contradictory narratives and representations. The space my parents left is silently evaporating, but it does not leave me.

In a quest to reconcile my identities, I became interested in family imprints across the Moroccan territory over several generations. After 6 years of exploring and photographing these spaces, I discovered a sealed envelope left by my grandfather in his workshop. Inside I found a few dozen negatives that had never been printed, which he had carefully cut up and classified by year, as if to remove these fragments from their time and send them to a future generation.

I then initiate a dialogue between these two temporalities on the territory.
The one that welcomed its King back from exile and regained its independence after 44 years of French protectorate.
The one that, through the process of emigration and assimilation of the parents' generation, lost its mother tongue.

The photograph curves the space-time to create these meeting points, superimposing our existences on both sides of the exile.

The black and white pictures are signed by Ahmed Alami, my grandfather.