Amina Benbouchta Biography

Casablanca-based Amina Benbouchta engages gender politics and the feminist slogan 'the personal is political' in paintings and photographs in which she uses herself as a subject. Positioning her body in charged, confining spaces, and often wearing costumes, Benbouchta explores themes of alienation, restriction, and identity. Differentiating herself from American conceptual photographers Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman, who have also made themselves subjects, Benbouchta focuses on issues surrounding the oppressed position of women in the contemporary Arab world. In her most recent series of photographs, she incorporates objects that reference dualistic themes of domestic confinement and escapism. Caged birds, rubber gloves, teapots, and mirrors cover the artist's face, acting as masks that transform Benbouchta into a universal symbol for inequality.