Wiame Haddad

Les objets de Tazmamart: Broderies

Between 2012 and 2016 Wiame Haddad undertook a long and meticulous photographic research and study that focused on the history of different political actors involved in the Moroccan “années de plomb” (or Years of Lead), a period from the 1960-70s that were marked by state incited violence and the political repression of dissidence. From the 70s onwards, the Morocco people, and democratic activists in particular, experienced a long period of arrests, forced disappearances, imprisonment, and torture.

Haddad’s research project resulted in Objets de Tazmamart, a series of photographs of different artifacts related to the last tangible witnesses of the secret prison of Tazmamart. Included amongst these objects are a rosary, an embroidery, and a pair of scissors. This collection of objects is not only an archive, but the construction of a corpus of objects produced during years of survival and resistance. The authors and owners of these objects were imprisoned for more than twenty years, immersed in the total darkness of the Tazmamart prison in individual cells measuring only six by ten feet. The gesture of these hours spent making the objects in the dark both underlines the absence of the body and its patient resistance. Haddad’s project reveals itself as a document, the only visible trace of this dark place whose existence has long been denied by Moroccan officials. These small, seemingly insignificant objects oppose the regime’s attempt at suppression and silence.