Biography
Nadir Bouhmouch and Soumeya Ait Ahmed’s collaboration is based on their sense of urgency towards rapidly eroding ancestral, artistic, social and ecological practices and knowledge. Their work looks at how rural art forms have often been relegated to the category of folklore, which distorts their perception and questions their validity as contemporary art forms.
Bouhmouch and Ait Ahmed‘s collaboration began in 2019 on a project called AWAL [the word]. AWAL consisted of residencies, exhibitions, workshops, performances, screenings, public programmes and grants for young artists and researchers, with a focus on those from peripheral areas of Morocco.
The duo have a fluid working relationship, with Bouhmouch introducing visual and textual materiality into their practice and Ait Ahmed conceiving the work’s form. They are invested in long-term collaborative projects and research. They collaborate with rural communities, document oral literature, exhibit, curate, initiate cross-regional conversations, and allude to the importance of transgenerational transmission and relations between lands and people.
Their collaborative projects include the film You’re There and I’m Here (2020) commissioned on behalf of the city of Marrakech; the workshop and exhibition Timghi, LE18, Marrakesh (2021); the exhibition All The Countries without Legends are Condemned to Freeze to Death in collaboration with Archives Bouanani Collective, LE18, Marrakesh (2021-2022), the exhibition A Door to the Sky or a Plea for Rain co-curated by the duo and LE18, Marrakesh (2022); and the Moroccan film library as well as public programming in North African cinema at documenta 15.
Bouhmouch was born in 1990, Morocco. He lives and works in Marrakech.
Ait Ahmed was born in 1992, Casablanca. She lives and works in Marrakech.