Franco-Moroccan Artist Explores Exile and Identity in Photo-Poem Exhibition

Like the sand carried by the waves of the Mediterranean, Mouna Saboni has long been haunted by her Franco-Moroccan dual culture. In 2018, she took up her pilgrim’s staff, thus leaving Rennes, her hometown, to explore Errachidia, where her father is from. Connecting memories and rhymes, she first came out with the series "Traverser", then "Those our eyes seek and those before them still", exhibited at the Galerie 127, in Montreuil until the end of February 2021, reports Télérama.

Born to a Moroccan marketing professor and a Breton schoolteacher, Mouna Saboni holds a master’s degree in social and solidarity economy. She then studied photography at the Arles school. She began her adventure in 2012 in Palestine, then went to Lebanon, Egypt and Armenia, discovering the life of displaced, refugee or would-be migrant populations. Her photo-poetic work, composed of veiled desert landscapes with verses, tells this shifting heritage "where anchoring collides with a perpetual questioning".

Her texts are first written in French, before being translated into Arabic, then engraved on glass plates. Her enthusiasm flows into them in frantic waves and reflects "the history of a country that has long been passed down orally".

Her inspiration comes from both sides of the Mediterranean. "The poetry of Mohmoud Darwich, the words of Marguerite Duras made me falter. I have always written in parallel with my projects, without managing to link the whole. With this form where the words encroach on the image, I believe I have finally found a comfortable in-between." "All my images resemble self-portraits. The partially hidden faces, the overexposed panoramas embody my relationship to Morocco," she concludes.