Presentation

MOUHCINE RAHAOUI WAS BORN IN 1990 IN JERADA, MOROCCO. HE LIVES AND WORKS IN MARRAKECH. A 2017 graduate of the Tétouan School of Fine Arts, Mouhcine Rahaoui's work explores the experience and history of miners in the Oriental region, particularly in his hometown of Jerada. He proposes an immersion into the meanders of his memory and his relationship with the raw reality of a town where the only way to subsist remains to take the 'rabbit path', confronting the probability of not emerging. According to urban legend, it was through an encounter with a black rabbit covered in coal that a Belgian forest ranger stumbled upon a coal deposit in the late 1920s. This led to the first mining operations in the town of Jerada. Mouhcine Rahaoui questions the absurdity of life in its unreasonableness and unfairness. The mine confirms man's fragility in the face of the unpredictability of the mountain that feeds him and sometimes swallows him up. Mouhcine Rahaoui tells the story of these dangerous, clandestine expeditions to extract the coal that sustains life and gently consumes it. Mouhcine Rahaoui wonders why, in Jérada, work leads to death rather than life. Through a series of reproductions, installations and ready-mades, cataloguing miners' tools - torches, helmets, gloves, ropes - in a dominant shade of black, Mouhcine Rahaoui infiltrates us into the aesthetics of the worker and informs us, through a visceral gesture, of his fate, sealed by the mine like an immutable destiny. Mouhcine Rahaoui's work has been the subject of two monographic exhibitions: one at the Comptoir des Mines gallery in Marrakech in 2023 and the other at the AFIKARIS gallery in 2024. It has also been presented at Art Paris, 1-54 London and artgenève. Source : https://afikaris.com/fr/artists/120-mouhcine-rahaoui/