M.Y: Stuart Hall described diasporic identity as “a matter of becoming as well as being”— always in motion, never complete, resisting monolithic definitions and essentialist narratives of origin. In what ways does your work operate as a Third Space, destabilizing binary notions of “center” and “margin”?

N.A: My earlier answer might seem paradoxical: I value abstraction, free from the need to provide answers, yet I also feel compelled to situate my work politically. It’s the approach itself that matters. I never start with an idea to illustrate; the process teaches me what I’m seeking. Moroccan transport trucks are a crucial analogy, overturning the hierarchy of “high” and “popular” art. In that culture, I found a school of artisans, symbols, systems, and codes. Building a practice within a culture at the margins already means turning away from the grand “canons of art.”

Western art history teaches artists to position themselves “after” a movement, responding to a canon. But in other traditions — Islamic, African, Asian, or popular — creation is about transmission, variation, and refinement. Work evolves relationally and contextually, in dialogue with the world, rather than trying to surpass it. I don’t follow a logic of rupture. I am not trying to “advance art” or converse with contemporary art history; I am in dialogue with what surrounds me, what resists and attracts me in my environment. Engaging with these aesthetics taught me the necessity of fluid existence — one in constant motion. Attempting to fix or classify it is where violence occurs: boundaries imposed on what is inherently permeable, traversed, and multiple.

M.Y: After documenting over 200 transport trucks, you realized fascination from a distance was insufficient. Rather than exoticizing or commodifying “popular” culture removed from its context, you engaged directly with the artisans and their ecosystems. How does your approach model cultural appreciation rather than, in bell hooks’s terms, “eating the Other”?

N.A: It all comes back to honesty. It wasn’t just that distant fascination wasn’t enough — after so much documentation, the urge to create asserted itself. It’s like observing a flower: you’re captivated and feel the need to possess it. You could pick it, display it, make it your own — but then it dies, its connection to the environment broken. Its beauty isn’t only in its petals, color, or scent, but in the ecosystem it inhabits and the long processes that sustain it. One can focus only on the flower or try to understand what allows it to exist. For the artist, the role may not be representation, but entering a dialogue, letting oneself be infused by what gives it life.

That’s what happened with the trucks. At first, my fascination was distant, almost astronomical, like celestial bodies brushing past through gravity. Then came the need to engage, to get closer. I chose to face the risk of exoticism or appropriation. To avoid “picking the flower,” I had to understand the soil, the processes, and accept that this culture doesn’t belong to me. It exists independently.

This approach requires humility and patience — a desire to learn and understand without defining or validating. I began visiting truck construction sites across Morocco, especially in Khemiss Zemamra, a historic hub where printers, metalworkers, leather craftsmen, and painters collaborate. Each truck is a collective artwork within a living ecosystem. From these encounters came a motif often painted on the back of trucks: the road itself. As the truck moves, the fixed image interacts with the lines of the road. I studied this system — white lines, horizontality, rhythmic color — and began making my own variations: one drawing a day in a yearly planner, a practice of repetition and patience, until a language emerged that stayed connected to the original but became fully my own.

A horizontal, relational aesthetic grew, grounded in dialogue. I don’t pick the flower; I draw as if I’m trying to feel what it’s like to be one myself.