Still a few days to admire the beauty of this exhibition! Yves Saint Laurent Museum of Marrakech announces its fourth temporary exhibition as a tribute to a Marrakesh artist who marked his time, the photographer Leila Alaoui.

Almost three years after the disappearance of the artist in the attacks of Ouagadougou, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum of Marrakech, in partnership with the Foundation Leila Alaoui, exposes the work of the Franco-Moroccan photographer in the city where she grew up, Marrakech .

From September 30, 2018 to February 5, 2019, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum of Marrakech presents the series “Moroccans”, one of the first photographic projects of Leila Alaoui. Thirty portraits, some unpublished, made between 2010 and 2014, across the Kingdom, which echo the cultural plurality of Morocco put in the spotlight at the Berber Museum Majorelle Garden.

✔ “Moroccans” by Leila Alaoui, or the epiphany of faces

About her series of portraits, Leila Alaoui explained: “Drawing on my own heritage, I have lived in various communities and used the filter of my native Moroccan birth position to reveal, in these portraits, the subjectivity of people I photographed. “

For 4 years, she travels the country with her mobile studio, to capture all the diversity of Morocco through faces, looks and costumes. Through this work, Leila Alaoui brings a strong pictorial dimension to her photos and thus perpetuates the age-old practice of portraiture. Like the great painters of the history of art, she adopts a neutral background – black – and assumes the frontality of her angle of view.

The garment, whether colorful or banal, makes the bodies forget, revealing a real epiphany of faces. The exhibition curator, Guillaume de Sardes – writer and photographer – can only point out that, from portraits to portraits, we mainly remember faces and looks that “accompany us a long time after the museum’s exit”.

For the first time, the Majorelle Garden Foundation has reserved free access to this temporary exhibition, in order to share with the greatest number, and especially with the Marrakchis and Moroccans, the look of Leila Alaoui on her fellow citizens.