Naïma El Kadi

Naïma El Kadi studied photography at the Academy of Arts in Bornem and has received a master's degree from the renowned Egyptian photographer Laura el-Tantawy. She currently lives and works in Antwerp (Belgium).

 

Kadi bases her work on research and often undertakes long-term projects, exploring personal stories related to family relationships, identity and social issues. Kadi moved to Belgium when she was ten years old. He was born in Rabat as his parents had moved from Ait Addoul, a small and remote village in the Rif Mountains, just before his birth. Trying to understand and learn more about his country of origin and where his ancestors came from, Kadi travelled to Morocco, to the village where his parents were born.

 

His work My Olive Tree, Memouna, translates his search for identity and home into images. ‘My Olive Tree’ refers to the olive trees that grow in the region where they are considered a source of life. An olive tree to which he adds Memouna, the name of the artist's longed-for grandmother.

Most of El Kadi's photographs are dreamlike and blurred, based on distant feelings lost in the past. Through trembling portraits, faces on the verge of fading away and slightly out-of-focus dreamscapes, Naïma El Kadi wants to create new roots. Photographs that symbolise the process of reassembling the images of fragmented and lost memories. The thread that runs through these images attempts to link the past and the present against the backdrop of the beauty of Moroccan nature.

 

The images made with expired polaroids, their pale colours make us realise the deceptive condition of photographs. A memory is always something we have lost, even if we hold the photograph of this memory in our hands. The burden of images is mysterious like the weight of smoke.