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Text by Christopher Spring, curator of the North, East and South Africa at the British Museum

Textiles and music are central to the work of Hassan Hajjaj – surrounded by the sounds of musicians from around the world he makes cloth, he cuts cloth, he conceals in cloth and he reveals through cloth; music and textiles provide the language and landscape in which he plays and in which appear the many characters he creates. Hassan is the artist, the tailor, the conductor, the weaver, the photographer, the embroiderer, the manager, the roadie and the designer who uses cloth in a variety of humorous installations which, nonetheless, have very serious points to make. His past work frequently examined stereotypical notions of Morocco and North Africa which have their roots in European Orientalist images of the nineteenth century and which he brought up to date using materials and motifs with which we are all familiar, but re-arranged in unexpected – and often uncomfortable – ways.

Hassan Hajjaj’s latest series of works, entitled “My Rockstars Vol.1”, are equally playful but

are not so much a critique, more a deeply felt tribute to a diverse group of people who are all artists in their different ways. Hassan’s “Rock Stars” range from the henna girls of Marrakesh, via the fashion designers and dancers of Paris and London, to the Gnawa masters of Morocco whose hypnotic music has its roots as much in indigenous traditions of sub-Saharan Africa as in the Sufi brotherhoods of Islamic mysticism. The keyword in the title is “My” because these are not all global superstars by any means, except in Hassan’s eyes, of course. He is the alchemist who transforms them, on one level, by the simple addition of his signature sunglasses, socks, hats or suits made of flour sacks. On a deeper level the transformation is through the lens of Hassan’s camera, for these images also represent a tribute to the great studio masters of photography in Africa – Keïta, Sidibé and particularly Samuel Fosso.

Hassan is acutely aware of the tradition in which he is working, a tradition which embraces past, present and future. Textile backdrops and props, often appearing again and again over many years, are familiar elements in this tradition. In Hassan’s case he uses vividly coloured plastic mats of the type which he remembers his uncle weaving in Marrakesh when he was a child; he then saturates his images with the brilliant colours of the cloth dyers’ suq. Just as the images created by earlier masters of the tradition transformed the citizens of Bamako, Dakar and Bangui into larger-than-life characters, so Hassan’s art has immortalised his friends from around the world as Rock Stars in this unforgettable series of images.

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Text by Ekow Eshun, british curator, author, journalist

Women occupy a central place of prominence in Hassan Hajjaj’s Dakka Marrakchia series. Dressed in vividly patterned djellabas, they pose lie fashion models on the streets and roof-tops of Marrakesh. Shooting from a low angle, Hajjaj depicts his subjects as arresting and charismatic, in deliberate refutation of Western stereotypes of the Arab female as an exotic or submissive “Other”.

The works in this series are shot exclusively in Marrakech. Chiefly dating from the early 2000’s, they highlight how the artist has long been engaged in an interrogation of culture and identity. In the fusion of Western brands and logos and Arabic dress and setting that characterises the images, Hajjaj conjures a mood of vibrant cosmopolitanism. African, Arab and European sensibilities and influences come together in a constant conversation, looking to and borrowing from each other without hierarchy.

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Hassan Hajjaj's works are in important museums collections like :

Victoria and Albert Museum (UK),
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA, US),
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (US),

Institut des cultures islamiques de Paris (France),

In 2019, the artist had a major retrospective at Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris. In 2023, his work has been exhibited at Brooklyn Museum (US), Tate Modern (UK), at Saint Louis Art Museum (US) and National Portrait Gallery (UK).

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HASSAN HAJJAJ