With fellow iMAE students I contributed to an artistic project initiated bythe Moroccan NGO Darna, which was a follow-up to a similar project executed 10 years earlier. Life-size textile figures were made representing women and placed into the public space. The audience reacted violently to the dolls and destroyed several of them. After a decade of awareness raising on gender issues the idea was to retry the same experiment.
More than thirty figures were sewn and dressed, representing different styles. I designed and made three dresses: a djellaba with a Moroccan tiles pattern, to honour the zelliges tradition of hand-made tiles and mosaic, and another djellaba with a design painted by a young Moroccan artist named Samir Douas. The third I made from red and blue shopping bags in a style that is commonly worn in Mali. In addition to the Ciwara mask and the work done on mobility, this was another effort to acknowledge the presence of Sub-Saharan communities in Tangier. The inclusion of just one dark-skinned puppet among thirty white ones echoed a broader pattern that I encountered throughout my residency: the presence of Sub-Saharan communities in Tangier is substantial yet often remains largely unseen.
