Hadith w Moghzel Workshop with Oumaima Abaraghe and our cooperative members
Drawing on the proverb “Hadith wa Moghzel” — “conversation while spinning wool” — this workshop invites participants into a collective act of remembering, listening, sharing and working with our hands as a quiet act of archiving our shared history.
Responding to the framework of this edition, “A Politics of Listening” Oumaima Abaraghe honours the often everyday acts that inspire transmission and collective sharing –– talking whilst doing something with our hands. Hadith wa Moghzel will center around shared memories of drought, famine, and the resilient practices that have shaped the southern regions of Morocco.
While our collective and personal memories are encouraged through the workshop –– reactivating fragments of histories that often live outside of written archives, our hands are encouraged to stitch on to a shared cloth, allowing these memories to take a material form.
At the close of the workshop, the embroidered cloth will become the vessel for gathering and we will share a collective meal on the fabric that has been collectively stitched with our memories and stories.
No previous embroidery experience is needed; all materials will be provided.
Oumaima Abaraghe is a visual artist and a member of Tizintizwa collective. Focusing on the material repair of memory, Oumaima’s practice subverts colonial archives, reactivates collective memories and challenges inaccessibility to official archives. Revealing and reintroducing cryptic themes in oral stories, her work often visualizes the links between historical traumas, their cultural and social residues, and how they speak to the present context. Additionally, her practice touches on other themes mainly around challenging hegemonic narratives and power structures – historical, social and environmental, by centering them on popular culture, ancestral experiences, social discriminations and public inaccessibilities.
Her work and research have been part of various programs, residencies, and shows, including Villa DeLaPorte and Daret Residency in Casablanca, Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates, and currently in Residency with Le Fond Regional d’Art Contemporain Poitou-Charentes in Angoulême.