Morocco (2014-2019)
French-Moroccan photographer Ilyes Griyeb, born into a family of Moroccan farmers, started his project ‘Morocco’ in 2014. He captures herein a country torn between Western dreams and resilience. In his urban landscapes, we see the stigmas of the futile attempts to link up with a globalising world, such as the ever-unfinished houses and dustbins bulging with the waste of a cheap consumer society. He photographs the agricultural community in dignified, tranquil images. The play of light and warm colours, resulting from Griyeb’s hand-printing technique, give the photographs an intimate, almost dreamlike dimension. In this series, he focuses his gaze on young people, who are introduced to new role models through satellite dishes and the Internet and are rebelling against the expectations of their traditional parents.
The unpolished and contemporary visual poems of self-taught Griyeb clearly exude the conflict of having a dual nationality and a colonial background: the tendency to always look at yourself through the eyes of the other, often with contempt or pity. He seeks to create a portrait of the Moroccan working class without misery, without class differentiation, and without exoticism. The question of identity is inevitably present in his work; Griyeb is part of the first generation of Moroccan immigrants with access to the international art world.
