Visual Artist / Painter

I was born in Mahbas in Western Sahara. Back then called Spanish Sahara. I remember when the Moroccans attacked our city in 1975 and we had to flee. We ran to the south, not knowing where we had to go, we just had to find a safe place to be. I remember that we had to walk from early morning until sunset. My mother found some other people with whom we kept walking. We found a truck and they transported us to Tindouf in the middle of the night. In the first few days of our arrival, they organized the kids and put us in a tent class. I was about 10 years old. We often went under the ground to avoid air strikes. People gathered and cooked in these pits. My mother used to make bread in these pits. So I took my early education underground, literally. Then I went to Algeria to continue my education. After high school, I went to Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Oran. I actually used to draw on the sand since I was a nomad in Western Sahara. When I went to school, many people encouraged me to pursue an art career. The teachers at the school of art encouraged me to explore painting and sculpture, and that was what I did. I have been exhibiting locally and internationally ever since. I exhibited in the camps, in Algeria, Spain, Hungary, UK, France, Portugal and Spain. This work tells about my earliest connections with drawing on sand, it refers to our political plight and our aesthetics. This is our identity and my art deals with many of these issues.