Peeled Sunflower Seeds (2022–present)

Peeled Sunflower Seeds investigates the social construction of markets in Casablanca, Marseille and Brussels, examining how architecture, gender, informal economies and visual codes shape the exchanges between seller and buyer. As the project evolves, it continues to explore how my presence as a woman with a camera intervenes in these dynamics—shifting gazes, interrupting routines and revealing the fragile negotiations and hierarchies embedded in everyday market life.

Rooted in my childhood summers in the souk of Northern Morocco, the work traces how imitation brands, narrow corridors and intense bargaining shaped early understandings of diaspora identity, status and economic inequality. Over time, the souk transformed from a place of playful exploration into a gendered environment defined by hypermasculinity and unspoken rules. The sunflower seed shells left behind by men on the staircase—small but persistent traces—have become a central metaphor: Peeled Sunflower Seeds as a symbol of residue, memory and the subtle marks people leave on social space.

The project expands these personal memories into broader reflections on desire, taste and their  colonial inheritances. Western brands—real or counterfeit—circulated through these markets not only as commodities but as carriers of aspiration, hierarchy and the long afterlife of colonial influence. The craving for Western aesthetics, and the belief that “everything Western is modern and beautiful,” has shaped entire economies of imitation. These dynamics do not simply reflect consumer desire: they reveal how colonial histories continue to inform notions of value, beauty and belonging. The market becomes a site where global capitalism, nostalgia and postcolonial desire collide.

This context frames the emergence of Tcharmil, a youth subculture whose name derives from the word for marinade, but whose visual identity centers on hypervisibility, status symbols and market-bought fashion. Often associated with young men navigating social exclusion, Tcharmil aesthetics transform imitation brands into tools of self-fashioning, rebellion and resistance. The souk becomes their stage—its goods enabling performances of power, masculinity and defiance against political stagnation. These visual strategies resonate strongly within my own artistic language, reflecting the tension between aspiration and constraint that marks so many postcolonial urban spaces.

Artistically, the project brings together analogue photography, staged performances and sculptural interventions. Through mise-en-scène images, I reconstruct moments of market reality in quieter street corners, creating space for reflection amid the usual chaos. Working with vendors, I initiate performative interactions that foreground the frictions between bureaucracy, informality and lived experience.

By placing myself inside the scenes rather than observing from a distance, the project becomes a dialogue between photographer, subject and environment. It examines both how I look and how I am looked at. Through this evolving process, Peeled Sunflower Seeds introduces the layered reality of the souk into the realm of contemporary art, using it as a metaphor for social structure and collective memory. The work reflects on migration, capitalism, gendered space and the complex economies of belonging, revealing how the traces of colonial history continue to shape desire, visibility and everyday life.