Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History

Dates

2022 - Ongoing
Author

MAryam Touzani
Locations Morocco, Netherlands

Lack of Information Is My Family History, records the artist’s personal search for her heritage. With little to no information about her family history, setting off on a journey tracing the story of her Moroccan ancestry and multicultural upbringing.

Using her teeth—carriers of one’s unique genetic encoding—as a starting point, MAryam Touzani photographs and assembles all the pieces of evidence she can collect: from dental X-rays and passport images, to her father’s death certificate and colonial maps omitting her ancestor’s region of origin. In her investigation where answers do not seem to come straightforward, photography becomes a poetic tool, allowing Touzani to reconstruct her past, in order to imagine her future.

The title refers to the scientific name of the argan tree, one of the oldest existing trees growing in the Sous valley in southwestern Morocco. Traditionally, the fruits are processed into argan oil by women from the local Amazigh community. As an Amazigh woman, but born and raised in The Netherlands, MAryam Touzani uses the symbol of the argan tree to trace back her roots and honour her female ancestors.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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With obsessions, you suffer from compelling thoughts or are compulsively preoccupied with a particular idea. At the center is a persistent, recurring thought. You can be very bothered by these thoughts that intrude.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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You get two complete sets of teeth over your lifetime. As a baby, you have 20 teeth; as an adult, you should have 32.With this project, I use the photographic medium as a visual method of investigation, integrating self-analysis notes to research my family history. Nothing was ever told to me, preserved, or saved.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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It never disappoints; I know precisely what is waiting for me.I have sat down too many times in the waiting room of several dentist practices. Not because of the yearly check-up, just because I have poor teeth. I suffer from toothaches. I am hesitant to say it out loud. I am a 24-year-old woman that has spent way too many times at the dentist just because of my poor teeth.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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I try to embrace the process of entering a world where I use my genetic teeth disease as a starting point to discuss how I see, experience, and feel identity. A process of deep research into my origins, which I document rigorously through specific photographic methodsand languages.

© MAryam Touzani - She's walking towards leaving behind the past and heading into an unknown path

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She's walking towards leaving behind the past and heading into an unknown path

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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My teeth become an object and subject at the same time. In this practice of alienation, I bite through to the family I don't know. I learn about migration history, heredity, intergenerational traumas, social class, and different zeitgeists. Did my family ever exist, and can I bring our history to life?

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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I wondered a lot during this process if I was breaking the fragile family balance or embarking on accepting the given absence. Nevertheless, I did not stop and still wanted to find evidence that my family existed in this life.

© MAryam Touzani - Smile

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Smile

© MAryam Touzani - ''go fix it''

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''go fix it''

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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Ever since I got to know my dental pain has a connection to my background, I have been on this quest. It triggers me that there is nothing physical I can hold on to.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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This project contains different imagery(making)-information. The unknown becomes usable through the biological material I found in a rare family album founded in 2019: family and passport documentation images. I layer different photos into one. Trying to get closer to understanding.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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Since its invention, photography was conceived as an extension of human perception, a tool to sample evidence to search for traces. The camera breaks down and stops time for a particular moment. By pointing the camera towards myself and past, I opened the door to my future.

© MAryam Touzani - Image from the Argania: Lack of Information Is My Family History photography project

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Unconsciously, this turned into a form of relief, an exclusion of possible selves, rather than finding a definitive self. At the same time, there is still this never-ending feeling of where I belong. In this research, with the questions where there are no answers available, photography becomes a poetic interpretation.