Houda Terjuman

Houda Terjuman was born in Morocco in 1970 of a Syrian father and a Swiss mother.  She is based in Marrakech. After her BA in the American College of Switzerland (Leysin), she attended the preparatory school of drawing Formes et Couleurs in Lausanne (Switzerland).  Her works speak of migration roots exile and resilience.  She paints and sculpts small familiar objects that weave stories.

”The history of my practice is overwhelmingly informed by my status as a hybrid migrant, a condition associated with second-generation migrants. My father is Syrian, my mother Swiss and I was born in Morocco. I am therefore African. The transient nature of my evolution as a person and as an artist opened up fascinating ways of playing with representation in art.

My father as a first-generation migrant used to tell us that we had no safety net and the integration in another country was necessary. However, I chose to refuse the concept and the practice of assimilation and instead, I cherished the status of hybridity which to me, offers a rich mix of backgrounds, voices, and belongings.

Even though I will eternally feel foreign and possibly always displaced, I have earned through my experience an incredible strength that comes from the power of mobility, and the sense of freedom brought to me through the multitude of roots, languages, and cultures I have grown up with.

It is precisely in this fine space between the ideal that a new life in a new place can offer, mixed with the regret of loss and nostalgia that is carried through the process of migration, that I have chosen to situate my practice and through which I work to represented feelings of floating freedom, but also of fear and insecurity.

My sculptures and paintings are little familiar objects that weave stories. These small objects act as bearers of hope and bridges making the link between cultures. An empty chair symbolizes what we left behind and keeps us connected to our roots. A lonely boat is a bearer of hope. A floating bridge invites us to build connections and empathy towards the unknown.” Houda Terjuman