Born in southern Morocco, Mohamed Arjedal has spent most of his life as a nomadic artist, a free errant spirit, in close kinship with the majestic, slow-moving camel, the ship of the desert. This humped giant knows nothing of borders, its freedom only curtailed by the shifting shadows of the steep-edged sand dunes. The frontier lines traced by human beings are arbitrary and irrelevant to the vast sandy ocean of the desert. What do these dotted lines on the map mean to the changing tides of sand dunes, their waves swept one way and another in slow motion by the strong Saharan winds.
This piece has a peculiarly personal meaning for the artist, who only recently began driving. Four times a week, he drives his father three hours to the hospital in Agadir for treatment. And these long trips along the straight ribbons of roads crossing southern Morocco are a source of fascination to him, now occupied by lines of trucks, minibuses and vans which have displaced the camel caravans of yesteryear.
Not only have the caravans been abandoned, but also the bodies of dead animals littering the roadside, witness to the nightly massacre of creatures which, mesmerized and confused by glaring headlights, run unerringly to their deaths. Thus the flat, straight roads crossing the expanse become a mortal frontier bisecting the desert where one could otherwise roam free for all eternity.
