What if I was born in Morocco

What if I was born in Morocco is an ongoing documentary photography series started by Yaqine Hamzaoui and Edouard Valette  to discover Morocco through the eyes of young local women with shared interests, specifically skating.

Together, they travelled to Morocco to bring light to the communities of skaters, focusing on the lives of Aya, Ilham and Zeineb, in Taghazout, Casablanca and Rabat respectively. In these spaces they’ve built, these women can be themselves, creating their own communities far away from their realities and gender inequalities.

This exhibition highlights the contrast between the freedom they experience in the skating community versus the gender-based limitations they encounter in their daily lives. The aim of this project is to create a bridge between Belgian and Moroccan women and to bring these communities together to explore their singularities and similarities. As the project is work in progress, the artists are considering a documentary film as the final outcome.

This series was a way for Yaqine Hamzaoui to reflect on her Moroccan heritage and to ask herself : If I was born in Morocco instead of Belgium, what would my life be like? What place would I hold in society? How much freedom of mind and speech would I have?