Rida Tabit: The Silent Stories of Marrakech

Moroccan visual artist Rida Tabit (b. 1990, Marrakech) focuses his practice on the hidden places and forgotten stories of his hometown. While Marrakech has rapidly developed into a bustling tourist hub, Tabit has witnessed how parts of the city, and the people who live and work there, have slowly been pushed into the background.

One of the central themes in his work is the city’s centuries-old leather tannery. Once a vital center of craftsmanship and tradition, today it stands as a symbol of fragility and decline. The silence and the hidden stories of the tanners, whose knowledge has been passed down for generations, are overshadowed by modernization and decay. Tabit chooses to make that silence visible.

Listen also to our podcast interview with Rida Tabit:

His photographic series on the tannery earned him the Prix Mustaqbel in 2024, awarded to emerging photographic talents. But Tabit’s practice goes beyond photography alone. During a residency at the Montresso Art Foundation, he experimented with new forms and materials. He created handmade paper from substances derived from the tanning process itself. On this fragile surface, he placed cyanotype portraits of the tanners, images he then partially erased with acid, a chemical that has replaced the natural methods once used.

These faces, scarred yet enduring, were stitched onto the handmade paper with wool. The stitches act as both aesthetic gestures and symbolic marks: scars and connections at once, representing the deep bond between the tanners and their craft, as well as the pain of loss and transformation.