Teapot Artist / Painter

I was born in the Tifariti neighborhood, Samara refugee camp. Drawing has accompanied me since my childhood. When I finished my school, I gave it all my attention. I am a visual artist and I paint on different materials. In 2005, I was working at the workshop of the Women’s Center in Boujdour camp and I started to use teapots as a canvas to draw. I realized that I could use an everyday object like a teapot to tell the story of my people. The Sahrawi people love to make tea. We think that we cannot survive without it. We spend a long time making tea every day. We make it three times a day. And each time, the tea ceremony takes about one hour. The Sahrawi tea ceremony brings the family together and we share stories and news around tea. As the heat levels increase in the desert, people cannot go out for long hours of the day. Around midday, the sun outside is too hot, we can’t sleep, we can’t go out. So what do we do? We stay inside and make tea! A teapot is an object we touch every day, and I want to use it to tell my story because teatime is our way to resist the increasingly unbearable heat.

Works:

Tea pots, 2024