- Artist or Maker
- Hassan Hajjaj
Morocco, Larache, born 1961, active London, United Kingdom and Marrakesh, Morocco - Title
- Caravane
- Date Made
- 2011
- Medium
- Dye coupler print with wood frame and found tins
- Dimensions
- Frame: 53 9/16 × 36 5/8 × 2 1/2 in. (136 × 93 × 6.35 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2014.162
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
Caravane is a portrait of Helena Parker-Jayne Isibor, also known as the Venus Bushfires, a Nigerian
singer-songwriter. She wears a bright red robe adorned with the Coca-Cola logo and a colorful headscarf
wrapped around a frame to project outward like giant ears, all the while flashing the victory symbol with
her left hand; in her right hand is her Swiss-made, UFO-shaped instrument called the hang.
Hassan Hajjaj was born in Larache, a small harbor town in northern Morocco. He moved to London as a
teenager, and now divides his time between that city and Marrakesh. Best known as a photographer,
Hajjaj depicts a globalized society where the margins of cultural identity—whether African, Arab, or
European—are continuously shifting and blurred. Here, as in many of his photographs, Hajjaj creates
frames incorporating Coke or Fanta cans or various other packaged goods often labelled in Arabic.
- Selected Bibliography
- Lawson, Dhyandra. Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st Century Art & Poetics. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.
