Tsawwar… Abdelhamid Belhamidi
“Where is the Sea? is a dystopian photo-fiction series. It tells the story of a connected society, seen through the eyes of someone who does not belong to it. A figure comes out of the water into our hyperconnected world, dressed in a simple white cloth. He walks through it slowly, facing the black shapes of screens and an endless cycle of information, and his day repeats in a loop. When he finally turns back toward the sea, it is too late. The screens have already taken over.
The photo sent here represents the figure in one of his moments of wandering. He carries a newspaper that was originally 800 metres long, an object I built by hand so that the weight of information would become physical. He is reading and unrolling at once, walking a street that only leads further inland, away from the water. It was shot in the industrial zone of Casablanca, in a place where the traces of the past were still standing when we photographed it. Those traces are gone now, replaced by a residential area.
The series of 18 photographs questions how information circulates today: published in mass on social media, flash news is mistaken for knowledge, and the thirst for knowledge has become a passive scroll. The sea in the series stands for what remains human in us, still and constantly changing. It is also the mother, the liquid we grow in for nine months. The character is played by the performer Khalid Raji.”
Abdelhamid Belhamidi (Rabat, 1990) lives and works between Casablanca and Montpellier. A self-taught Moroccan artist, his multidisciplinary practice spans conceptual photography, documentary film, and performance. His work explores information overload, workplace well-being, burnout, and the changing nature of salaried labor, often drawing on his own experience in sales and distribution. His series Where is the Sea? and No Land for the Lost Routine offer allegorical portraits of the individual within a hyper-connected, consumer-driven society.
He is a 2025 Prince Claus Seed Award laureate. His work has been exhibited at the Musée National de la Photographie of Morocco with BIENALSUR, Artorium Art Space in Casablanca, and the Sharjah Art Foundation. He has participated in residencies including Masaha Art Residency at Misk Art Institute in Riyadh and the DAAD Berlin–Marrakech program.
Tsawwar is an ongoing visual series in Daftar which explores the stories behind a photograph, taken in the region or by an Arab photographer, written in their own words.
