Le Théâtre Imaginaire de Ouled Saïd

My grandfather comes from the Ouled Saïd tribe in Morocco. From him I inherited a proud sense of belonging to that region. He once confided that he had known I was a true Saïdia by the way I lingered at the table, by my sense of humour and by my very own way of sprawling on the seddari of the living room. I wore that title proudly. I was a saïdia, a descendant of Ouled Saïd.

All I know of Ouled Saïd is what my grandfather told me. The cattle, the harvest and the little eggs. The crushing sun that yellows the fields. The mausoleum, the chikhates and the aïta. The stork’s nest on the minaret of the mosque, and the long naps after lunch.

Coming across recent photos of Ouled Saïd, I realised that the little village I had imagined had a pharmacy, a bank and plenty of cars. Several stork nests sat on several minarets of mosques and I could not recognise the one my grandfather spoke of. I had to accept it. I recreated Ouled Saïd in my imagination and invented a nostalgia for a place where I had never lived, and which may never have existed.

From this disillusionment came the idea of the Imaginary Theatre of Ouled Saïd, a project about a fictional tribe-town. In constructed sets, the story of my reunion with invented inhabitants is staged. To make Ouled Saïd a theatre is to acknowledge that my gaze is already a staging. From then on I embrace this subjectivity, refuse restitution and choose to move further into a space of free creation, able to fill – or not – my lack of real experience of the place.

This disenchantment, combined with my migratory journey to Quebec, also gave rise to a question: does the diaspora fabricate “mental sets” to connect with origins that are hard to reach?

In this project, I propose to explore the Moroccan diaspora not as a documentary narrative but as a space of fiction. To embrace invention is to explore new territories, to tell rather than transcribe. It is to free oneself from the obligation of accuracy in order to express an emotional rather than factual truth. The invented space can condense several places, several eras, several memories. It becomes a visual metaphor for multiple experiences. I belong to an Ouled Saïd where the real and the imaginary contaminate each other, and I vow to recreate through painting this place of belonging that exists only for me.