Lune, oh Lune / Mon alphabet de terre

Sara Ouhaddou’s practice is centred around a collaborative approach that builds on her Moroccan and Amazigh heritage, and the associated communities of craftspeople. Exchange and encounter are vital to her process, with an emphasis on natural materials and handcrafted techniques. Her dual French-Moroccan identity informs a practice in which local craft typologies are reimagined within global contemporary frameworks. In an effort to resurrect threatened Moroccan vernacular crafts and ensure their survival, Ouhaddou’s experimentation is led by an ethics of collaboration. Her artistic practice bears a social humanist commitment—brushing anonymity off artisans and instilling an autonomy in local crafts against the backdrop of industrial standardisation.

The two ceramic panels Mon alphabet de terre and Lune, Oh Lune trace a full circle of her research—like an unadorned puzzle beginning in its most neutral form, gradually becoming chromatically imbued with colour. Having learned about the technicalities of Moroccan clay over a decade ago, she insists that it is through this reciprocal dialogue and mutation with artisans that mutual needs are surfaced and addressed.

The need that Ouhaddou traces here is that of inventing an abstract alphabet through architectural instruments. She asks: “How can we represent something that is oral?” and “How can we translate something that couldn’t be written?”—as everything in Amazigh, her natal language, is oral. In tracing the geometry of a language, she moves from the textual and the sonic, attempting to translate this expression through abstract shapes. She maintains that “each piece is a song or a poem”, such as Lune, Oh Lune, which adapts an Amazigh poem by Mririda n’Ait Attik. The final articulation of the pieces constantly varies, and their interpretation remains deliberately open. Simultaneously, the artist explores and conceptualises Islamic geometric patterns, establishing a contact point between the crafts and traditions of the Arab world and global contemporary art. Ouhaddou seeks to broaden the discussion around the function of traditional arts and crafts, particularly those linked to Arab and North African identities. In constructing this geometry, she is unavoidably deconstructing her own identity through a personal lens, interrogating all that pertains to Moroccan culture and landscape. Yet, she does so while allowing the material to remain raw, honouring an ancestral gesture.