Born in 1973 in Meknes (Morocco). Lives and works in Marrakech.
Ghizlane Sahli embroiders, sculpts and draws. She tells of an interior and organic journey, carried by a universal dimension. With the help of ancestral techniques and the know-how of the women artisans who surround her, she develops her contemporary ideas. Together, they create three-dimensional embroidery, including the “Alvéole”, from the waste she collects.
The Alveolus is the elementary particle of her work. It is the atom that constitutes substance. It is the cell whose accumulation and proliferation creates the work.
Ghizlane thus brings her point of view by playing with materials, scales, volumes. She uses thread (silk, wool, plastic or metal) to weave and celebrate the subjects that stimulate her: The human body, in general, and the female body in its intimacy. Ghizlane is inspired by metaphor with nature to develop her purpose and express her interiority and emotions. Pure emotion, cleansed of any religious, social, educational or generic contribution. After studying Architecture in Paris, Ghizlane returned to Morocco and settled in Marrakech. Passionate about embroidery and fabrics, she decided to open a textile design workshop, where she surrounded herself with craftsmen. Ghizlane was immersed in this universe for seven years and thus developed a certain look at this world of thread that fascinates her. She received the award for creation
At “Colors Trophy” in 2009.
In 2012, following the creation of a dress made from waste (garbage bags, cans, plastic bottles) made for the Marrakech Mag. Ghizlane decides to close her embroidery workshop and devote herself to pure artistic creation. She forms with her sister and two photographic friends the collective Zbel Manifesto which works mainly with waste. The collective performs at the Marrakech Biennale 2014, presenting an installation “Pimp my garbage”. They are then invited to participate in the inaugural exhibition of the Mohammed VI Museum in Rabat.
Today Ghizlane continues her work with the help of women artisans. They are together researching new practices for handling silk thread. She imagines poetic, dream-like worlds where she can experiment and create bridges between her three passions, space and volume, stemming from her architecture studies, silk thread, from her involvement with embroidery, and the environment, from her personal interrogations regarding durable development and the future of the planet.
She thus enjoys transforming the material, exulting it and giving it meaning. Her work is part of Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), The Galila’s POC Museum in Brussels, Fondation H in Paris.
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