Photography and Textile Meet in a Shared Artistic Exhibition

A shared reflection on femininity, where history and presence intertwine.

Casablanca – As part of Photography Month this May, Galerie 208 brings together two artistic worlds in “Étoffes du temps” (Fabrics of Time) exhibition, where image and textile come into quiet dialogue.

From May 14 to July 15, photographer Majida Khattari and architect, textile artist Soumiya Jalal explore memory, the body and the passage of time through staged photography and layered fabrics.

Although rooted in different practices, photography and textile meet through a shared attention to transformation, both working with form, surface, and material to evoke what is carried across time.

Majida Khattari: revisiting orientalist imagery

Through carefully staged compositions, Majida Khattari builds images that echo the visual language of 18th-century Orientalist painting. These works often portrayed women as passive, decorative figures within imagined “exotic” settings.

Khattari reuses these visual codes but shifts their meaning from within. Drawing on this visual heritage, she reworks its language to question the representation and status of women.

In her work, the body is no longer reduced to an object of display, but becomes a presence that asserts itself through construction, staging and control.

By working through staging, costume and composition, she turns a historically constructed gaze into a space of critique, offering a contemporary vision shaped by agency rather than illusion.

Absent from the scene since 2019, Khattari returned with a body of work that revisits her long-standing dialogue with art history, image construction and the representation of women.

Soumiya Jalal: material as a form of language

Through a practice rooted in architecture and material experimentation, Soumiya Jalal works with mineral elements and industrial materials such as stone, copper, silver, gold, and metal grids. These materials are not treated as static matter, but as elements in constant transformation, shaped through gesture, tension, and composition.

Jalal reworks what is considered raw or industrial, elevating it into intricate structures where ornament and construction merge. Her approach turns material into a form of language, where layering, transparency, and density become ways of telling stories.

At the heart of her work is a reflection on the feminine as both structure and sensibility. Through compositions that evoke a contemporary form of lace, she creates a balance between fragility and strength, where each layer carries memory and rhythm.

A dialogue between the Orient and the Occident

In “Étoffes du temps,” the work of Majida Khattari and Soumiya Jalal converges into a shared reflection where image and material become interconnected languages.

Photography and textile are no longer separate practices, but two ways of shaping memory, presence, and the passage of time through the body and matter.

Reflecting on this encounter in a press release, curator and founder of Galerie 208 Patricia Chicheportiche situated the exhibition at the intersection of artistic sensibilities and cultural dialogues.

She highlights how this meeting point allows for a deeper exchange between the two practices, grounded in both aesthetic sensitivity and historical resonance.

“The two artists share a common sensibility for architectural aesthetics and beauty in its most delicate expressions, and it is precisely there that their dialogue is established.”

“This aims to create a deep dialogue between the Orient and the Occident, using photography and materials to stage history,” she added.

“By connecting these two universes, I wish to build bridges between committed female artists whose practices converge to explore subtlety. It is a truly aesthetic and historical conversation where materials intertwine harmoniously.”