Ghizlane Sahli

Born in Meknes, Morocco. Lives and works in Marrakech, Morocco.

After architecture studies in Paris, Ghizlane returned to Morocco and settled in Marrakesh.

Enthused by embroideries and tissues, she decided to open a workshop working with textiles, assisted by local artisans. 

Ghizlane florished in this world of tissue during 7 years, and hence developed a certain vision of it. She received the Prize for Creation at the « Trophée Couleurs » in 2009.

In 2012, following the creation of a dress made from waste (trash bags, jerricans, plastic bottles), produced for the Marrakech Mag (a local cultural magazine), Ghizlane decided to close her embroidery workshop and focus on pure artistic creation.

With her sister and two photographer friends, she formed the Zbel Manifesto collective, which works essentially with waste. The collective appeared at the Marrakesh Biennale in 2014, presenting an installation, « Pimp My Garbage ». They were thereafter invited to participate in the inaugural exposition of the Mohamed VI Museum in Rabat.

Today Ghizlane continues her work with the help of local artisan women. Together they seek new ways of working with silk thread. She has developed « the Alveoles », three-dimensional embroidery, made from the tops of used bottles, covered with silk thread.

She imagines poetic, dream-like worlds where she can experiment and create bridges between her three passions, space and volume, stemming from her architecture studies, silk thread, from her involvement with embroidery, and the environment, from her personal interrogations regarding durable development and the future of the planet.

She enjoys transforming material, subliming it and giving it meaning.

Her work is part of the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London and the collection of the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden  (MACAAL) in Marrakech.