IN CONVERSATION WITH
You describe yourself as a“ field person” rather than a researcher. How does that shape your work?
I don’ t really do research in the academic sense. My work happens in the field. What I collect are testimonials, not texts. If there is a history in what I do, it is carried in my hands, not in footnotes. I have spent thirty years moving through Morocco, meeting people, listening to them, and learning from the objects that come out of those exchanges.
Morocco’ s weaving traditions carry centuries of layered Amazigh, Arab, Andalusian, Saharan and Mediterranean influences and remain deeply regional today. What happens when those traditions meet?
Every region has its own visual language. Béni Ouarain, Béni M’ guild, Béni Mtir, Zayane, and Imouzer Marmoucha( weaving communities scattered across Morocco’ s Middle Atlas mountains) each refer to a territory, a palette, a plan, a vocabulary of motifs. But what interests me most is what happens when those boundaries blur. A woman from Zayane marries into a family in Imouzer Marmoucha. She doesn’ t abandon what she knows. She takes the plan of her new home’ s rug and folds her own motifs into it. That mixing is how new stories are made. It isn’ t a contamination of tradition. It is tradition doing what it has always done.
Women are central to Asətta. What does their knowledge contribute?
That question goes back to Curriculum Vitae( an earlier piece of mine), which I consider as a precursor to Asətta. I asked women from several weaving traditions to place every symbol they knew onto vertical bands. If they still knew what a motif meant, they wove it in black. If they had lost its meaning and were simply reproducing what their grandmother had done, they wove it in white. What came back was a map of memory, region by region. I would love to repeat the exercise in five years to see whether the balance has changed.
Asətta brought together 166 crafts people. You make a distinction between collaboration and co-creation. Why is that?
Because they aren’ t the same thing. There is a commission: I give someone a prototype, and they reproduce it. Another mode is when an artisan modifies something I have given them, and I decide to keep that change. And then there is full co-creation. That is what happened with the Etzba, the first piece visitors encounter. I worked with three cooperatives in Souss-Massa( southern Morocco). We gave them the concept— the Etzba as a talisman, a form of protection— and parameters for size, colour and material. But the patterns are theirs. That is why their names are on the wall next to mine. But naming the artisans isn’ t enough. The harder question is whether a project like this can actually return value to these women’ s hands and sustain their micro-economies, rather than simply representing what they do.
Everything. When I say 166 artisans, I mean people I already knew and had built continuity with over many years. The overwhelming majority are women. Behija Hafdaz, for example, is a master dyer. She dyes wool by instinct and memory—“ a litre of this, two litres of that”— rather than a written formula. She once told me that a carpet she had woven over three years was her autobiography: a door, and behind it, her whole life. I asked her to translate that story into the bands used in Asətta. Her work is among the first things visitors encounter when they enter the pavilion. And then there is my mother, Malika Agueznay. She studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca( Morocco’ s national fine arts academy) and spent decades photographing Morocco’ s artistic landscape. In Asətta, Guardian of the Thresholds translates the feminine symbols she photographed during her travels into embroidery. It is a tribute to her.
”
She once told me that a carpet she had woven over three years was her autobiography.
You have described Moroccan carpets as a language of symbols. What happens when that language is forgotten?
Your background in architecture seems fundamental to the way you think about textiles?
”
My background in architecture is the foundation of everything.
It is the foundation of everything. In architecture, you start with a line. Repetition and accumulation turn the line into a plane. Bend the plane or add a third dimension, and it becomes a volume. That is exactly what happens on a loom. Thread becomes a line under tension. Lines accumulate into a woven plane. In Asətta, that plane is cut free and reassembled in space— suspended and anchored to create rooms, corridors and thresholds. There is also a cycle to it. The weaving is held under tension; when it is finished, it is cut free. That moment is traditionally accompanied by incantations. We included the women’ s voices performing those rituals in Murmurs( the accompanying sound piece). Line, plane, volume, tension, release, rebirth. The grammar remains the same, whether you are trained as a weaver or as an architect.
Why were thresholds so important to the pavilion?
102 MATAHEF ISSUE 05