Hicham Bouzid in 5 questions

My name is Hicham Bouzid, I am 29 years old, I was born in Tangier. I work as an artistic director and exhibition curator, my curatorial practice lives around different projects: I organize exhibitions, seminars, podcasts, artist residencies, open studios and more recently, I returned to something thing that really excites me which is publishing, by creating a magazine called Makan. The different mediums that I practice tend towards the same objective, around the contemporary issues that cross Moroccan society today. I try to create a narrative that emanates from our specific context. 

I did not study in the art world but I learned on the job, I started working as a bookseller at the Insolites bookstore in Tangier before settling in Marrakech in 2013 where I had the great pleasure of being part of the launch of 18, Derb el Ferrane, a multidisciplinary cultural riad in the heart of the medina of Marrakech. This space of cultural and artistic experimentation was an extraordinary experience for me and opened the way to several opportunities and encounters. 

In 2016, I moved back to Tangier and created the ThinkTanger platform, a cultural project that explores the social and spatial issues of the city of Tangier. 

This year, ThinkTanger celebrates its 5th anniversary as the project started as a one shot. 

When we launched the project with Amina Mourid, the question was simple: what is happening in Tangier? Around us, there was a lot of change: exploded streets, new neighborhoods, new urban infrastructures. ThinkTanger is interested in the impact of urban changes on people's lives and thinks of the city of Tangier through the cultural prism. Highlighting the experience of the inhabitants of Tangier is very important for a city that has suffered from a false fantasized image: that of the Beat Generation, both trashy, sexy and bohemian, at the crossroads of continents... But this image does not correspond to today's reality. 

Our cultural program takes shape around a cycle of reflection, a theme. It is structured around meetings with artists, researchers, urban planners, activists, who are interested in living together in a city. We also have an artist residency, open studio and exhibition and publication program through the Makan magazine, trying to involve an ever wider community. Our workshop is located in the city center but we create a link with the outskirts through an urban laboratory program that we develop with communities from these neighborhoods, always to reflect the urban and social change of the city of Tangier in through people's experiences.

Atelier Kissaria is a space dedicated to the production of objects and printed images, launched one year after Think Tanger. In Morocco, the kissaria is the ancestor of the mall, the place where you can find everything. We wanted to create the practice kissaria, a place where you can screen print your poster, produce fabric, etc.

I had the chance to meet and collaborate with the artist Yto Barrada, also from Tangier, whose work is an inspiration for us, who offered to share his Tangier workshop with her. When I launched the Kissaria workshop, it was less to produce than to question production, the role of craftsmanship as an artistic practice in itself and reincorporate craft practices into an artistic production process, because in Morocco and other African countries, the history of art is extremely linked to craftsmanship. Personally, I personally consider that a carpet produced by a weaver and in which patterns and symbols reflect something beyond decoration. There is also an obvious link between crafts and the city, today artisans find themselves, because of the massive industrialization of a city like Tangier, on the sidelines. 

Today we focus on independent printing and publishing, through screen printing, which I also practice on a personal basis and which, itself, is an artisanal, ancestral practice, at the center of artistic production. We are developing the Kissaria workshop which will become the Tanger Print Club.

Tangier still has the atmosphere of a small town or even a village even though it is a metropolis of 2 million inhabitants (which lacks the infrastructure of a metropolis…) People have a routine, I meet the same people in Café de Paris every day. I love this city enormously, I am fully invested in it because it gives me a unique opportunity to develop extraordinary things. Tangier inspires me, I observe what happens on a daily basis, I observe people. In the city center, where I live, extremely different backgrounds and extremely different socio-economic categories intersect, which is not the case in other cities. I am very attached to this rather absurd human mixture.

I define myself as Mediterranean first by food: eating a tomato and feeling the sun in it. In Tangier, despite the super and hypermarkets that have sprung up everywhere, there are still places like the jbala market. Three times a week, the jebliat, these women who live in the mountains come down to town to sell their products, vegetables, fruits, seeds, free-range eggs, excellent olive oil, etc. For me, the Mediterranean is about those little everyday pleasures that cost little and are very important. I am also thinking of the mix of cultures found in Tangier and the Mediterranean. I also want a Southern Mediterranean identity, where borders still exist. I feel that I don't belong to the same side of the Mediterranean as some who can go back and forth: I see Tarifa every day but I don't have access without a visa!