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SARA OUHADDOU ‘Mon alphabet de terre’ at Art Basel

@ouhaddou_sara
Mon alphabet de terre, 2025
Engraved terracotta panels
93h x 310w cm

Sara Ouhaddou’s practice is centered 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. 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 ceramic panels trace a full circle of her research—like an unadorned puzzle beginning in its most neutral form. 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.

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.

📍Today is the last day to visit us at Booth P5 in the Premiere sector
17-22 June
@artbasel

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