As'tta, Bahija Sajid (Invited by Mouhawalat Collective) - Mahatta

For the first activation of "Mahatta", Bahija Sajid presents As'tta, an artistic performance.

In As'tta, the artist attempts to question the act of linguistic and ritual transmission through the practice of weaving handed down by her mother. The performance culminates in a focus on the present, where the artist lays out her journey as a weaver and her multiple attempts to perpetuate this heritage. Shadows fade, hands intertwine, voices decompose, weaving and unweaving her story through thework songs recited by Amazigh weavers from the Tinghir region. An ode to transmission, to collective gestures that tell the story through a language of traces, extracted from the skills inherited from several generations.

Leaving herself alone on stage, Bahija Sajid claims through a monologue that mixes plastic poetry and lyrical prose. Her position as an artist and her duty to pass on the tradition through her work. The performance combines hand-weaving and singing to explore the intergenerational transmission of craft skills and heritage. 

‍Mahatta is a participatory installation that acts as a station for sharing and exchange. This station grows and shifts; its components multiply with each encounter. Similar to a plant that spreads throughout its environment, the installation is an archive in progress that recalls and listens to collective voices and shared opinions, questions, concerns, reflections, doubts, feelings, stories of attempts, perspectives, solidarity and common ground.

For the Art Explora Festival, Mouhawalat Collective (Diyae Bourhim & Ahmad Karmouni), will welcome to their Mahatta installation a selection of art students recently graduated from the INBA, to invest and activate the hybrid space of Mahatta through a series of in situ interventions that vary from day to day for the duration of the Festival. A wider circle, an invitation to explore the imaginaries and narratives that shape our collective understanding of the art world. This proposal interrogates the practical realities and struggles inherent in the creative process, exploring the expectations and realities of young artists in transition between the academy and the professional world.

Each graduate contributes to transforming Mahatta (the station) on a daily basis, making this space a landscape in constant evolution. Mahatta thus becomes a station where each passenger leaves his or her mark, enriching the space with individual and collective stories. Every day, the installation reinvents itself, capturing the diverse voices of the participants.

Bahija Sajid

Bahija Sajid (b. 2000) from the village of Albouihat near Essaouira. Graduate of the Institut National des Beaux-Arts de Tétouan (2024). Her practice draws on the weaving craft meticulously handed down by her mother. Through installation, sound and video, she reveals the poetic possibilities and multiple forms of writing offered by this ancestral practice. By taking part in workshops specializing in sound art and weaving techniques, Bahija develops an approach in which weaving becomes a medium for critical reflection that questions our relationship to heritage, identity, the transmission of know-how and the social ties she navigates in its contemporary uses.