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| A border of soup cans - shades of Warhol - mixed with Lolita's heart glasses and a polka-dot veil...this is not your mother's burqa! |
London artist
Hassan Hajjaj was born in Morocco, and returns regularly to photograph the vibrant street culture of his native city of Marrakech. His exhibit of photographs of women motorcyclists can be seen through
March 7 at the Taymour Grahne Gallery in NYC, titled 'Kesh Angels', ('Kesh being an abbreviation of Marrakesh), and has generated significant media attention.
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| Attitude, with a backdrop of brilliant north African color |
News outlets breathlessly 'reviewed' the exhibit by inaccurately describing it as 'Moroccan motorcycle girl gangs!', but the truth according to Hajjaj is more prosaic:
"Most of the bikes [in the photos] are their own bikes, Marrakech is really a bike city, everybody rides them - young kids, men, women. It's a feast for the eyes, you'll see a woman riding with a sheep behind her and her husband behind that, or 2 guys with a big sheet of glass between them. An inspiration for me was Kerima, a 3rd generation henna painter in the main square, who rides her bike back and forth to work every day. She speaks 4 or 5 languages, works 8-10 hours a day, raises two kids, and built her own house."![]() |
| Nike's swoosh meets Legos with Arabic letters |
Hajjaj riffs on multiple layers of Moroccan culture, from traditional African portrait studios (such as Malick Sidibe and
Jean Depara) to Pop art use of soda cans and extensive appropriation of designer logos on definitely non-designer clothing. His mashup of bad-girl attitude with luxury-branding on their veils and djeballah (head-to-toe coverings) certainly messes with stereotypes of Islamic women, as well as the current, peculiarly American trend of women riders to self-promote via the internet, simply because they ride. What does it take for a girl to be cool? In Marrakech, just as in LA, it's all about a motorcycle.
