M’barek Bouhchichi Moroccan , b. 1975
Black Seeds, 2025
Charred wood, thuya wood, copper, and nickel silver
Variable dimensions
MB-000130
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Bouchichi’s use of materials is always intentional. His artworks embody complex ideas through material choices. Copper, a mineral and a pure chemical element, was historically used as a medium of...
Bouchichi’s use of materials is always intentional. His artworks embody complex ideas through material choices. Copper, a mineral and a pure chemical element, was historically used as a medium of exchange in the Sahel region, copper metallurgy being native to Niger and Mauritania. It is a mineral associated with circulation and transaction, as well as ritual and healing. Using copper alloys is a way for the artist to suggest the promise of transformation that the experience of migration entails. For all his endeavors towards instituting a Black space of representation, Bouhchichi refuses all ideas of racial purity. Marked by physical displacement and existential placelessness, Black life is inherently multiple and, as such, must be thought of in relation. Blackness cannot be reduced to a single model. The artwork Black Seeds (2025), a display of eight imaginary seeds, reflects this conceptual thread. Against the homogenizing pressures of marginalization, the task of the artist is to invent forms that convey the living multiplicity of the Black experience.