Amine El Gotaibi

Amine El Gotaibi is a Moroccan fine artist who identifies strongly as a maker of the continent of Africa and within the MENA region. He has a thriving multi-disciplinary studio practice located in Marrakech, and his work traverses the practices and borders of craft, sculpture, and multi-disciplinary communities and narratives of making. His work typically engages with natural materials, such as wool and earth, and links to historical and societal concerns and reflections.

El Gotaibi is particularly interested in exploring tensions that exist between opposing positions, forms, and materials. This is evidenced in his commission for the Ned Hotel and Design Doha Biennale, “Desert of the North”, which looks at these tensions through the juxtaposition of the natural materials wool and copper and explores how they interact with each other and the surrounding environmental and light conditions of the space.

For the first iteration of the Design Doha Biennale Amine El Gotaibi’s commission “Desert of the North” will be on-view in the central atrium of the Ned Hotel, Doha, for which it is a site-specific piece. Reflecting El Gotaibi’s conceptual commitment that: “objects are anthropological and historical markers,” Desert brings together two materials of Morocco -copper and wool- in an installation that hangs from the cantilevers above to encompass the space of the Atrium. As the wool and copper interact with each other and engage with the site and materials of the Ned Hotel Atrium, they: “tell unique stories of time and place, of makers, of communities, and of values.”

The individual strands of wool in Desert hold narratives and memories of the desert and its communities. Each piece of wool cascades from strands of copper, which are constantly shifting, changing colour, in motion, and responding to the environmental conditions.