part of the trilogy “La parole transmise” (2014-2020).
“Mellah” is a project created for Paris and its citizens. The creation of a symbolic, intimate and common space where the private memory of Moroccan Jews who emigrated to Paris is activated and shared. An attempt for a collective memory.
The Jewish neighborhood in Morocco is called “Mellah”, a Hebrew word meaning “salt”. Between the 1950s and 1960s, many Jews unexpected left Morocco in a silent migration to Paris, Montreal and Israel. There is no collective memory of these departures that were a shock to the Arabs and generated a sense of amnesia and political ambiguity. Later, in the narrative, Morocco became a model of religious tolerance and an example about complex identities and the plurality of historical accounts.
For seven days, every day at the same time, a different witness was seated on a chair in front of me, between two salt walls. I asked every time the same three questions to start a dialogue between me and the witness, between the community and the audience.
It became a regular practice for the visitors to came back daily listening to a different tale on the same history or asking new questions. The dialogues took out as main topics, the role of education as a power for emancipation, memories about the departure and life in the Mellah, the nostalgia for an ideal place in the memory, quite different from the real one.
Photo documentation by Alice Delva & Keith Leung
