ARTIST

Hicham Benohoud’s practice is rooted in Moroccan culture and societal structures, exploring notions of individual and collective identity.

La salle de classe (The Classroom) is a group of over a hundred photographs made between 1994 and 2000 while the artist was working as an art teacher in a Marrakech school. To make them, Benohoud involved the students in his class in a performative project. They were given different physical constraints – specific poses and gestures to adopt – and a range of accessories to wear on their limbs or around their bodies. These accessories included nests of boxes, wire, broken mirrors and large rolls of paper or fabric, evoking a theatre of child psychology and creating a tension between childish games and symbolic violence.

In some of Benohoud’s carefully staged photographs, the rest of the class continues to work studiously at their tables while other students play as surreal puppets, at times apparently ‘beheaded’ or handicapped in some way by their strange accessories, and at other times hanging from the ceiling of the classroom as if its spatial limits had been extended by force.

These shackled and bound bodies are depicted in an enclosed space, since the classroom windows can barely be seen, making the use of light critical in the transformation of these young people into ‘living sculptures’.

Benohoud’s imagery references both the art of pantomime and the confined environment, demonstrating the artist’s familiarity with the writings of French philosopher Michel Foucault on prisons.

La salle de classe is in the Tate Modern’s collection.

CHARITY

Zakoura Foundation has the largest nongovernmental network of schools in rural areas of Morocco.

The full proceeds of Hicham Benohoud’s photograph will go toward funding a new, free pre-school program for children in rural parts of the country. This program will not only serve up to 75 children, but will also include education for mothers.