Fragments

شروخ

Fragments

Zineb Bouchra | Morocco

February 29, 1960. An earthquake destroyed Agadir in 15 seconds. Over 12,000 people died. Zineb was born decades later and excavated the city's archive, searching for what persisted.

Her paintings emerge from the space between dreaming and waking, where trauma becomes abstraction. Fragments suspended in mid-fall collide and scatter across dark canvases. The moment of destruction captured not as impact but as uncertainty, suspension, the pause between states.

From this fragmentation, her practice evolves. Intuitive mark-making that renders devastation becomes luminous transcendence. Purples, pinks, pale greens dissolve into canvas. Rust transforms into bougainvillea. The same gestures that testified to loss now testify to growth.

Broken things contain the seeds of something new. The artist's hand moves from documenting collapse to witnessing bloom. One continuous gesture—from darkness into light.

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MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS

Artist Biography

Zineb Bouchra (b. 2001) is an emerging mixed media painter based in Morocco who graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan in 2024. Her practice centers on translating internal experience into visual form—the moment between dreaming and waking, where images dissolve and sensation overtakes clarity.

Her work explores how trauma and memory persist across generations, rendered through abstract fragmentation rather than narrative. She has been supported through significant residencies including the Digital Lab at the French Institute of Morocco (2023), MAC Asilah (2024), and Al Maqam Artist Residency, Tahannaout (2026). She is a finalist for the Prix Moustaqbal and has exhibited across Morocco including at Gallery Kent, Tangier.

Agadir Earthquake Series

The Agadir Earthquake Series responds to the February 29, 1960 earthquake that destroyed the city. Working from the city’s archive, Bouchra renders this historical event through abstract fragmentation rather than documentary reconstruction.

Objects appear suspended on canvas, arranged in geometric precision that emphasizes materiality even as forms float weightless. Dark canvases hold these fragments suspended, creating visual tension between weight and weightlessness, between collision and scatter.

Original

Zineb Bouchra

Solidity

22,500.00 dh

Original

Zineb Bouchra

Untitled I

7,000.00 dh

Original

Zineb Bouchra

Untitled II

6,000.00 dh

Original

Zineb Bouchra

Untitled III

6,000.00 dh

Original

Zineb Bouchra

Untitled IV

5,000.00 dh

In Between Series

The In Between Series emerged from dreams. Bouchra describes painting from the blurred images that remain upon waking, before clarity reshapes them into language. She works quickly, capturing the rhythm and speed of mark-making before the day makes everything sharp and defined.

Luminous purples, pinks, and pale greens dissolve across canvas in organic, repeating forms. Edges remain soft. Each mark is quick and honest. The imprecision is intentional. These paintings function as traces—evidence of something internal moved into material form.