“I have hated Fuerteventura for a year. Not for what it is, a land full of magic, but for what I found,” Moroccan photographer Imane Djamil (Casablanca, 28 years old) tells EL PAÍS. She came to this Canary Island to investigate stories related to migration. “I wanted to cry all the time,” she laments. She has tried to capture the injustices that she says she discovered in Slow days on the Fortunate Islandan unpublished series of photographs taken between 2021 and 2024 that shows the link between the surfers of Tarfaya, a town of about 8,000 inhabitants located on the coast of Morocco, and Fuerteventura, the destination chosen by these athletes to become professionals in Europe. The exhibition is part of the exhibition Ephemeral landscapes of the sun, which can be visited free of charge at the Casa Árabe in Madrid from August 26 to September 15.
Djamil lives in her hometown of Casablanca and works as a photographer throughout Morocco. Despite her young age, this visual storyteller has exhibited her work at the Bamako Biennial (Mali) and Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates), among others. “At first, I saw photography as a creative and spontaneous way of expressing myself, but I started to get involved and began to see it as a weapon to fight against the stereotypes of my region.” For her, the Global South has forgotten to document its own communities and therefore, “in people’s imagination, they are only centers of violence, while the West seems to be free of any oppression.”
For a year now I have hated Fuerteventura. Not for what it is, a land full of magic, but for what I found
That is why Djamil decided to make a series of photographs about a reality that rests on the Moroccan coast: migration. The route he takes begins in Tarfaya, a town he has been going to for 10 years and which has become his second home. As a destination, Fuerteventura, the closest Canary Island. “My friends have always referred to Fuerteventura as that place that would end suffering and broaden horizons,” he recalls.
The goal that Tarfaya’s residents hope for is to make surfing their way of life. “The young people there think that the renewal of the town depends on surfing, not only as a sport, but as a lifestyle and economic model,” says Djamil. They dream of Europe to become professionals and start projects such as founding clubs or opening surf shops. This is the case of Ares, former champion of this sport and one of the protagonists of Slow days on the Fortunate Islandwho skipped school as a child because he was fascinated by watching the young people in his town surf. As a teenager he became one of them, and during the pandemic, he went to Fuerteventura to try his luck, without finding it yet.
“They cross the ocean with no guarantee of survival to end up on an island with no land border to cross. For migrants, Fuerteventura is a deep-rooted fantasy of the West that has been shattered because in the Canaries, apart from tourism, there are not many other economic opportunities,” he admits. In his opinion, Casablanca is much more liberal and advanced. Moreover, with his friends, he has always joked that Fuerteventura is like Akhfennir was, a quiet village 45 minutes from Tarfaya, 20 years ago.
From the series, the artist would like to highlight the photograph that can be seen above, which shows a denied visa application. “This is signed proof of a serious lack of respect. A person sitting in an office can determine whether or not you have the right to travel to Europe,” says Djamil, deeply angry. “Some people are born legal and others illegal, which means that some have the right to mobility and others have to earn it by applying for a visa,” continues the photographer, who calls for respect and dignity in the procedures. According to her, her friend Salem Maatoug was invited to the islands by the Canary Islands surfing federation and his application to stay in the territory was rejected three times. The reason they always gave him was that “there are reasonable doubts that he will leave the State once the visa expires.”
If we were allowed to travel to Europe and see the possibilities there are, the European dream would no longer be a utopia.
Europe, and France in particular, is the fantasy of Djamil’s parents’ generation. “An idealised land rooted in our genetics, as well as trauma,” she says. The photographer considers the economic migration of the 1970s and 1980s to be a totally different experience from today, “also because of what Morocco was like before,” she says. “If we were allowed to travel to Europe and see the possibilities there are, the European dream would no longer be a utopia because some would benefit and others would return. We are very blind and it is difficult to understand the new realities of, for example, France, which is clearly very backward in different areas,” Djamil argues.
“An earthly paradise made for heroes”
In 2022, Djamil was looking for references to title her series. She came across a place that dates back to Greek mythology, the Fortunate Islands, located where the Canary Islands archipelago is today. “They were considered an earthly paradise made for heroes,” says the author. Slow days They are born from the visual tone of the images. “I wanted to play with the blurs so that all the elements, from Tarfaya and Fuerteventura, would happen in that fictional place called Fortunate Island“Djamil explains. His intention was to blend everything together and not have a distinguishing mark between the two territories that look “so physically similar.” “Both are purgatories, where nothing happens, things go slowly and people practically do nothing but wait,” he adds.
Djamil would love to see this work exhibited in Morocco. “I don’t know in which venue or festival, but I do know in my country,” he says. Years of research and creation Slow days on the Fortunate Island It has not been easy for her. “Tarfaya is a militarized area and therefore hostile. It is not easy to reach people and get them to share their stories,” says the artist. But thanks to the fact that it is a town where she grew up, she was able to gain the trust of its inhabitants, although she admits that there are red lines that she could not cross for her own safety.
The exhibition Ephemeral landscapes of the sun, The exhibition, which includes this series, also includes the work of other artists from Africa and the Middle East born between the 1980s and 1990s. Its curator, Analía Iglesias, explains that the purpose of this proposal is to “make visible a wandering and contemporary Arab society through population phenomena such as migration, persecution or confinement.” Another exhibition that stands out in Ephemeral landscapes of the sun This is the work of Sudanese artist Salih Basheer. This internationally renowned artist reflects in his photographs how orphanhood – his own – is connected to the escape from the hell of war and repression in Sudan.
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