It has been a while that I have been working on a series of ink drawings that aim to draw unexpected connections between the wonderland of childhood play and the games that have made up the World and History. In this project, the highly personal and local stories and the very historical facts are woven together in a fictional tapestry. These drawings shed light particularly upon the team games I used to play when I was a child or to observe other children playing, especially in my birthplace, a remote village in the Rif region of Morocco. These local game practices appear to be universal, and many of them go back to antiquity, e.g., ‘’Semsebbout’’ (leapfrog), ‘’lekiader’’ (Horses), ‘’Khbbayâa’’ (hide and seek), , ‘’Berouita’’ (wheelbarrows), ‘’Imzelqfin’’ (jacks), ‘’lîib ddiour’’ (households’ game), ‘’Rkûl’’ (kicking game), ‘’Kriitna’’ (target bowl game), ‘’Djebbaad’’ (slingshot), … They can also be considered as a synthetic source of instruction, a good occasion to learn about human societies, their orders and strategies for survival.

Mariam Abouzid Souali
Excerpt from the exhibition catalog