PORTFOLIO # 60.

MARIAM ABOUZID SOUALI

By Nii B. Andrews.

Children abound in Mariam Souali’s paintings because she confesses that her childhood spent in a small village in the Riif still exerts an enormous influence on her imagination, psyche and her creative process.

The paintings feature children playing- running, jumping, riding domesticated animals and wild beasts; leaping over buildings, ship containers and running free.

Souali left her childhood village for Rabat and then Tetuoan where she attended art school.

Do her paintings reflect the wish she may have had to regain her childhood freedom and innocence within an urban milieu with its multiple constraints?

Urban life impacted her life even further when she moved to Philadelphia where she is currently pursuing a PhD in art history at Bryn Mawr College.

We see in her recent paintings, outlines of huge concrete and glass towers with turret like windows – some unfinished with large mechanical cranes in attendance. 

“Philadelphia is a modern city: the sheer strength of the modern urban world is something that is creeping into my works now”, states Souali.

All these influences are brought together harmoniously in her enigmatic installation- A THREE PERSON GAME.

Her latest solo exhibition is currently at the Comptoir des Mines Gallery-:in Gueliz, Marrakech; it ends on November 30.

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