25.05.1976–present
Hafida Zizi
Hafida Zizi (born 1976) grew up in Aghbala in the family of a carpet weaver and took up painting and sculpture on her own at twenty-eight. In her pictures Amazigh women prepare food, play music and dance, and large open eyes recur on the faces. Her first solo exhibition was held in Imilchil in 2011, and since 2015 she has run a gallery in Aït Benhaddou.
Biography
The most recognisable device in Hafida Zizi’s work is the eyes: large and wide open, they recur from picture to picture and recall the Hamsa, the hand that wards off the evil eye.
She was born on 25 May 1976 in Aghbala, a town in the Middle Atlas, and grew up in a traditional Amazigh community. Her mother wove carpets, so the girl met craft and colour early. From the age of seven to fifteen Hafida went to school. Later she moved to Marrakesh. At twenty-eight she began to paint and to make sculpture. She has no formal artistic training and works as a self-taught artist. Her first solo exhibition took place seven years later, in 2011, in Imilchil. Shows followed in Casablanca and Marrakesh, as well as projects in the United States, France and Spain. Since 2015 Zizi has run a gallery in Aït Benhaddou, a site on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and in 2024 she opened a second gallery in Marrakesh.
She paints on canvas and makes objects: jugs, vases, lamps. Her subjects come from the everyday life of Moroccan women, chiefly Amazigh women, and from their role in their communities: preparing and eating food, music, dance. The scenes are laid out as narrative, and this is, I think, her main compositional device. Her colours are bright, her manner naïve, and contemporary and historical details sit together in the same works, softness with strength, the fantastic with the real. Among those she looks to, the painter Chaïbia Talal is named.
The Musée de la Femme in Marrakesh has given Zizi a temporary exhibition: from March 2023 to April 2024, and then from November 2024 to June 2026.
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