2021, Vinyl paint on wall, 6.35 x 4 m
In the summer of 2021, I undertook a public project with the aim of community beautification. I painted a 4m by 6.35m mural at the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in my hometown of Rabat, Morocco. An essential part of it to me was that when coming up with the design, I wanted the community’s input. Street art occupies a very specific place because it has unique attributes: it’s fixed in one place, and exposed to the public, literally in the street. As such, it is an intrinsic feature that it interacts with its environment, and, to me, that was the people: Museum employees, passers-by, visitors. They would see it every day; it was imperative that I took them into account, that whatever I made was for them: that I gave something beautiful.
Process
Over the course of the first week was the ideation process. Starting with research, studies, gauging interest and getting input from the people of downtown Rabat. Project negociation had already happened with the Museum Director Mr. Idrissi, so it was all about creative logistics from there. Going out and painting on-site gouache studies of Jidars in Rabat and Casablanca, jotting down what people wanted to see, hearing over and over that they wanted three things : nature, beauty, hope. Trying to practice drawing nature, beauty, hope.
This is around the time that my cousin Sam agreed to model for me. It's hard to find people willing to sit still and rearrange their pose for sometimes several hours while you paint and photograph them, let along people who are overall as genuinely kind and inspiring as Sam. Family has been a complex subject for me my whole life, but she is undeniably family to me, and I believe this genuine link showed through the final piece, that I painted someone important to me (who also happened to be willing to not move while I agonized over their face). I took many photos of the sky, the sea, and especially of light for this project, too. Light was to be an essential component, and I had to capture it just right.
On Sunday evening, the concept art. The original ideations are lost to my sketchbooks, but this final digital gridded piece remains. I would use it as a blueprint to scale up using the grid method onto the wall.
Approved by the Director, the wall could be prepared, primed, drawn on, and then, painted.
