Along The Wall: Dutch-Moroccan cultural collaboration

Crossing the Amsterdam IJ water by the small ferry, making your way through residential areas under construction and freshly delivered contemporary buildings to arrive at a modern office at a small canal, one doesn't expect to face Marrakech's Medina walls. That's why Along The Wall, the small photography exhibition by Moroccan photographer Rida Tabit at Galerie Poche, is such a pleasant surprise. The exhibition is an outcome of the Moroccan-Dutch Knowledge Exchange Programme in Marrakech in October 2024, organised by DutchCulture, the Reinwardt Academy and la Fondation Nationale des Musées in Morocco. It’s here where the artist met Poche’s curator Emma Waslander.

The old city walls of Marrakech – a UNESCO World Heritage Site - play a central role in Tabit’s photographs. Unexpected encounters play with the steadiness and permanence of the wall: a television in the street, a passing person, the shadow of – presumably – the photographer himself. The colours in the photographs are warm: saturated yellow, orange, brown, with long shadows and often blue skies. Tabit’s deep love for Marrakech is reflected in photo series that capture its tanneries, street life, and city walls - visual stories of his daily rituals and encounters.

Naturally, Tabit's photos should be hung on a wall. That's why Jeroen Mensink, founder and director of Galerie Poche, constructed a wall in the tiny gallery being part of the office of his company JAM* Architecten. Together with Tabit, he chose its colour: a terracotta brown. ''A wall is a strong architectural element. If we at JAM* Architecten take a photo of a project we completed, like a building, we always like to show people or something unexpected in the image. That's what I like about Tabit's work: you start to wonder what is happening,'' Mensink explains.

''Through my personal network, I came to know Emma Waslander and asked her to become guest curator of Galerie Poche. She invented the concept for the gallery, bringing together art and architecture.''

Both Waslander and Tabit participated in the aforementioned bilateral knowledge exchange programme on the intangible cultural heritage of Marrakech. For a full week, Moroccan and Dutch heritage professionals, cultural professionals and artists worked together on the case study of the Jamaa-el-Fna square, enlisted on the UNESCO intangible heritage list. How to preserve the quickly disappearing practices of the square? How to present these to a wider audience when they are only taking place at certain times of the day, or even the year?

The exhibition Along the Wall opened on 6 July 2025. For this occasion, Tabit was invited to come to the Netherlands. Besides a public opening, Mensink organised a private dinner to celebrate the occasion. An event at Soho House Amsterdam on 9 July, where Tabit answered questioned about his work, was also part of the celebrations.

After summer, additional programming to the exhibition will be organised. Historian Nadia Bouras, writer Abdelkader Benali and cultural entrepreneur and DutchCulture advisor Myriam Sahraoui will present stories and the history of Marrakech and Morocco related to the work of Tabit, accompanied by 'thematic dinners'. Because of physical distance, Tabit himself will most likely be virtually present during these dinners via videocall – the same means through which he stays in contact with Mensink during the span of the exhibition. Except for the first week of November, when Tabit will join the exchange programme on intangible heritage in Amsterdam and will be present at Galerie Poche. If you would like to attend these dinners, please follow @galeriepoche on Instagram to keep updated.

Along The Wall by Rida Tabit is on show until 22 November 2025 at Galerie Poche, Leen Jongewaardkade 109.

DutchCulture's work on bringing the Netherlands and Morocco closer together continues, resulting in a follow up project in November 20025 in Amsterdam in which new steps will be made in this exchange on intangible heritage between the Netherlands and Morocco. The objective is to co-create an exposition in Marrakech in the framework of this collaboration in 2026-2027.