French Artists Find Inspiration During Sahara Lockdown in Morocco

Upon their arrival in Morocco, Geza and Cherif Zerdoumi had worked on themes and participated in the Marrakech Biennial of African Arts, before the lockdown came into effect. "At first, we sorted and worked on the photos we had taken in recent months between the sea and the desert. Then we brought out and revised the khaïma fabrics, our raw material for textile works from the Sahara that we have left in stock. And then we jump rope to let off steam," Geza told La Dépêche du midi.

The KRM duo is resolutely at work. Geza works on these fabrics while Cherif uses fabric scraps usually intended for nomadic tents to form characters, imagine djinns, supernatural creatures who dance... Together, they create unique paintings. The confinement brings them more good than harm.

"For us, confinement in Tarfaya is almost a pleonasm, so far away are we from everyone and everything that goes with it. This is what we came here to look for 13 years ago, the desert in the Moroccan Sahara. It’s the old Cap Juby, the place where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote his first book and was inspired to write The Little Prince," Geza recounts.

"In the evening, it’s the desert in the desert. We are experiencing an extraordinary calm that has set in, a relieved sigh, that finally the world has stopped, rejoices Cherif. Nature needs to breathe. Let’s give it back its breath!" And to continue: "It’s an almost unheard of opportunity. Usually we run after our artistic production. This is the time for us to be able to experiment without pressure, and without any particular expectation of a result. What luck, what luxury, what a privilege! While in Europe, we count the dead. Once again, we are lucky!"