ARTIST STATEMENT --- Nohaila Gamah is a film director, screenwriter, and photographer. Quirkiness, edginess, affect, and transparency are tools that she often uses in her work. Nohaila’s work delves into themes close to her such as bicultural identity, gender identity, spirituality, and
intergenerational transmission. Her driving force is to tell authentic stories such as narratives with Moroccan influences and stories told from a strong womxn's perspective geared to a broad audience.

ZE3MA NEDERLANDER

Ze3ma* Nederlander consists of five curated pictures. Each photograph consists of an experience or feeling that I captured with an analog camera in June 2021. In this series, I worked intuitively as I felt that I had to make this series before taking on other projects.
At this moment in time, I felt many emotions but mostly frustrated. It was a feeling that arose from microaggressions that I experienced as a Moroccan-Dutch woman in the Netherlands.
When I realized that different microaggressions took a toll on me, I experienced something inherently spiritual. Some may describe it as the beauty of chance, but I don't believe in coincidences.
One day I was walking in Bos en Lommer, and I saw a fence. Random, you might think, but on the fence, "Ben Tayab" was written, which is the name of my parents' hometown in Morocco. I took a picture of it and images of other objects, people, and feelings that spoke to my intuition.
Looking at the first photograph, you can see that I combined a Dutch mill and this fence, which was the beginning of my Ze3ma Nederlander series. I created images that triggered the longing to feel at home within my identity in the Netherlands.

*In Tamazight Ze3ma means supposedly