And we have decreed “the Paradox” as a form of resistance to the supposedly logical order of the world, 2025

Soufiane Ababri

Soufiane Ababri: Hi, I am Soufiane Ababri. The title of this work is And we have decreed “the Paradox” as a form of resistance to the supposedly logical order of the world.
 
I did this fresco on a strip of paper measuring 422 cm long by 42 cm wide. This paper format, once rolled up, was very easy to transport, so I was able to work on it throughout the summer of 2025, traveling between Paris, Tangier and Marseille.

I think this itinerance work was already a performative idea of [inaudible] between these three cities, which have become very important places in the last decade for the Arab queer community.
The drawing depicts a long pilgrimage scene. By design it’s an ancestral rare ceremony taking place in Morocco.

This scene is located in Sidi Ali Ben Hamdouche near Casablanca. It’s a pilgrimage where religion, pagan rites and magic incantations are mixed and in which Moroccan queer community has participated for a very long time to ask for magic protection for gay lovers but also to be together for a few days.

For the moment, the queer community is banned from participating because of a government decision.
This is a once-a-year moment when the community makes itself visible in a country where homosexuality is punishable by law, but where forms of resistance have always existed in various forms but never documented.   
What I am doing here is to shape and make visible an unwritten history, banished by the official narrative, and to represent a community never before represented.

This fresco blends dance, communion and ritual to resist an oppressive system. The scene in the drawings takes place over a period that connects day and nights. A cycle to be repeated endlessly.