MAryam Touzani (NL/MA, b. 1997) is an image-based artist exploring diasporic identity and existential rootlessness. A child of immigrants, Touzani’s work navigates her Moroccan heritage within the context of a Dutch upbringing, examining where these cultures overlap, conflict, and fracture. Using photography and archival material, she questions how histories are preserved or silenced. Touzani holds a BFA from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and works as a picture editor for the NRC, a Dutch daily newspaper. In 2024, she was selected as a Foam Talent, featuring in Foam Magazine and a parallel touring exhibition.
Touzani’s Argania presents five handmade wooden objects, each functioning as both a hybrid frame and an archive. The objects hold layered photographs, found maps and archival material – fragments of a Moroccan Amazigh history that has been lost, overlooked, or partially erased. The artist deploys wooden panels to partially conceal the images inside, mirroring how parts of a lost culture might themselves go unseen. Importantly, though, Touzani’s work does not attempt to restore what has gone, but instead to hold onto what remains – however fractured.
