Rabat - Hicham Lahlou, a Moroccan-French designer, will participate in the international exhibition "AFFECTED" at the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem. His artworks will be displayed from February 18 to July 31.

Moroccan Designer Hicham Lahlou to Exhibit at Jerusalem’s Museum on the Seam

Rabat – Hicham Lahlou, a Moroccan-French designer, will participate in the international exhibition “AFFECTED” at the Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem. His artworks will be displayed from February 18 to July 31.

Born in Rabat, Hicham Lahlou gradually gained international recognition for popularizing contemporary Moroccan designs. With over 20 collective and individual exhibitions, the designer was elected as a board member at the World Design Organization (WDO) in 2017.

The election made him WDO’s first Moroccan and French-speaking African as well as the first elected designer originating from MENA and West Africa regions in the history of the organization.

He also received the French Republic’s Knight Order of Arts and Letters in 2016.

Selected by the exhibition’s curator Alon Razgour, Lahlou’s artworks, “Alf Lila, babouches inédites éditées en 1000 exemplaires par la marque marocaine Barok Babouches” (Alf Lila, new slippers in 1,000 set limited edition, by Moroccan brand Barok Babouches) and “ORYX édité par la marque de luxe historique internationale française DAUM” (ORYX by French international historical luxury brand DAUM) will be exhibited at Jerusalem’s socio-political contemporary art museum.

The New York Times selected the Museum on the Seam as “one of the 29 most impressive art institutions in the world.”

Hicham Lahlou previously participated in the 2017 collective design exhibition “Repositioning” at the L.A Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, also in Jerusalem. The exposition included artworks of Arab and Israeli designers.

After “Repositioning,” the Moroccan-French designer donated his famous creation, “Disco Pipe” hookah (chicha) to the museum as a symbol of “love, peace, and brotherhood.” The international French luxury brand Airdiem produced the hookah (chicha).

“AFFECTED” exhibition brings together nearly fifty artists and designers from around the world. Its opening will take place on February 18 at 11 a.m.

“The exhibition captures the artistic mindset in times of pandemics and illustrates how the new reality is reshaping the world. The role of art in such times is to provide hope while being a social critique, to stimulate the imagination, to raise difficult questions about moral problems, and to propose creative ways to deal with them,” stated the designer in a press release.

Reflecting humanity in times of distress, “AFFECTED” will display artworks created over the past two years as some of them commissioned specifically for the exhibition, the statement added.

The creations reflect the experiences of the artists and their approaches to the new socio-political reality resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While addressing their recent experiences, the artists and designers have engaged with topics such as communication, space, consumption, body, transformation, contact, and politics.