`The Moroccans´. Photographs by Leila Alaoui exhibition
to 09/01/2020
® Leila Alaoui. Self portrait
Following its initial presentation in Spain in June 2019 at the Casa Árabe Madrid and within the framework of the 22nd edition of the Festival PhotoEspaña, this exhibition now comes to the Fundación Tres Culturas (Three Cultures Foundation), which pays its own tribute to the trajectory and commitment of photographer and video-artist Leila Alaoui.
The The Moroccans display reveals a very personal journey of the young artist Leila Alaoui (1982-2016), who died tragically as a result of the injuries she suffered at the attack on Uagadugú, Burkina Faso, on the 15th of January 2016 when she was working on a report on women’s situations for Amnesty International.
This exhibition wishes to honour her trajectory as an artist, but also as a dedicated person. The thirty portraits that make up this exhibition come from rural areas across Morocco which, in Leila’s own words, arose from the “filter of her intimate position as a Moroccan with the aim of revealing the subjectivity of the people portrayed.”
Leila Alaoui created the The Moroccans series between 2010 and 2014. Rather than revealing the typical scenes of Moroccan life, she took portraits in the strictest and most classical sense of the term. Leila’s work carries the underlying idea of Richard Avedon, one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century, that “a portrait is the image of someone who knows they’re being photographed.” Nothing in Leila Alaoui’s images appears to have been stolen. It’s impossible to remain impassive in view of the strong pictorial dimension of her work.
With the collaboration of:
