MY MOTHER IS A STRANGER
(AND I LOVE HER)

2017-2020

‘My Mother is a Stranger (and I Love Her)’ takes the mother figure as a starting point to explore the complexity of notions of belonging, family ties, roots, and how these concepts took shape in the life of an only child who grew up far from the country of origins. Browsing family albums offered an opportunity to fill in the biographic gaps of my parents’ lives. Disclosing fragments of their past became an indirect way of experiencing the weight of colonial history on our personal trajectories. The intertwining of digital and physical layers—whether they are prints, arab’s butcher’s wrapping paper, or plastic film—simultaneously aims at underlining a feeling of isolation and restore family bonds through a creative gesture.
Involving my parents in the staging of their portraits enabled me to further explore identity issues and underline the opaque and multi-layered realities familiar beings shelter through their lives to the point of turning them into complete strangers at times. This project initiated a representational quest I keep on developing in other works.