For several years M’barek Bouhchichi has been confronting the realities of black existence in
Morocco and the Maghreb through his interactions with craftsmen from the south. He is
committed to learning from their devotion to simple shapes and primary materials, their ritual
reiterations of ancient gestures, and their ethics of patience in the face of discrimination.

Earth is an installation-accumulation of several thousand small heads manually produced out of
the same mold. Beyond their different hues –resulting from distinct treatments of the clay–,
these faces bear no specific markers. In their similarity and in the imperfections the artist chose
to keep, they suggest a common, generic humanness.

Through an almost absurd process of infinite repetition, like an insistent demand or an
impassioned prayer, Bouhchichi produces the bare, miniaturized image of an egalitarian
humanity. But the huddled population of equals remains inaccessible under glass. This work was
inspired by the words of a potter Bouhchichi met in Tunisia: “we are all made of earth”. Out of
this origin story the artist has crafted a horizon as palpable as it is out of reach.