At the gates of the desert, in the province of Ouarzazate, the Kafila caravan organized by the French Institute of Morocco offered a dive into a nomadic artistic residence. For thirty days, from March 10 to April 10, 2023, twelve Moroccan and French artists, accompanied by eleven cameleers traveled 300 kilometers on a route taken for millennia by nomadic populations.
A physical challenge, an extreme experience in the desert, bivouac in the evening and 5 to 6 hours of walking per day. The challenge for artists: how to create while walking?
Houda Kabbaj is a photographer. For this journey, she decides to work on minerals, and stones. And rather than taking photos as she usually does, she thought of a new creative process: “I had the idea of making a parchment with a roll of tracing paper. Anthropologists use the rubbing process with carbon paper a lot to extract engravings and I have applied this to stones.”
During their walk, the residents trod a ground full of stories. These thousand-year-old caravan routes, the performance artist Jenny Abouav drew inspiration from these for her future performance: “The most concrete thing was the camel drivers who really accompanied us. Already, to incorporate their bodies, their gestures, whether they are moments of loading with the camels, moments of cooking, or moments of walking. The approach is also very important. And with all these bodies that have crossed these spaces, all this very charged history of the ancestors.”
After this journey, each of the artists leaves with a wealth of images and sensations that will materialize into an artistic project in the coming months.
“Kafila’s journey this year followed in the footsteps of desert dwellers”
Ismael El Alaoui, who joined the caravan on its last stop, is an ornithologist and a connoisseur of the region. He explains: The route and the path of Kafila this year followed the footsteps of the inhabitants of the desert, who go up or who go down again towards Timbuktu or who go up from the south of Morocco towards other cities, for example, in the North.”
He explains: “The caravan, in the Moroccan collective memory, is not only this movement with camels, with mules or with other animals. It was also an opportunity to cross and connect several cities. There is also this exchange of knowledge, knowledge, products, clothes, many things that people share along their path and their journey.”
He concludes: “It is a tangible and intangible heritage also to be preserved and also shared because it is a singularity of Morocco, as well as the only means of travel and transport in southern Morocco.”
