GALB’ECHAOUF
Abdessamad El Montassir
While investigating an event that profoundly changed the landscape of the Sahara, Abdessamad El Montassir was faced with the silence of previous generations who remain haunted by a history that they are unable to tell. With “Galb’Echaouf,” El Montassir focuses our attention on landscapes, plants and poetry, in search of answers or elements that could participate in the reconstruction of this collective amnesia and its narrative transmission.
The artist-storyteller speaks the unspoken to the forgetful landscape of the stunning Sahara Desert. Portraying this harsh expanse with an open-ended-ness and a freedom of imagination, El Montassir wanders vast landscapes and explores that which remains elusive with the eyes and ears of a researcher without archives. Bringing form to silence, “Galb’Echaouf” blends scientific inquiry with poetry to create an oral history passed down through generations, while giving agency to those plants and inanimate entities that interact with, transform, and impact the world around us.