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Art Flourishes on the Walls of Morocco

Moroccan street artist Omar Lhamzi works on a mural during the "Jidar" street art festival in the capital Rabat, on September 20, 2021. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)
Moroccan street artist Omar Lhamzi works on a mural during the "Jidar" street art festival in the capital Rabat, on September 20, 2021. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)
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Art Flourishes on the Walls of Morocco

Moroccan street artist Omar Lhamzi works on a mural during the "Jidar" street art festival in the capital Rabat, on September 20, 2021. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)
Moroccan street artist Omar Lhamzi works on a mural during the "Jidar" street art festival in the capital Rabat, on September 20, 2021. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)

Artist Omar Lhamzi donned a bright yellow vest and paint-splattered shoes, selected a brush and set to work on his latest canvas -- the wall of a house in Morocco's seaside capital Rabat.

Lhamzi is one of a new generation of artists whose murals are changing the face of Morocco's cities.

A wander through Rabat's avenues and alleyways reveals an array of freshly painted works, in which larger-than-life fantasy creatures co-inhabit with realistic portraits and scenes of daily life.

Their creators flocked from across the North African kingdom and beyond to Rabat last week for Jidar -- Arabic for "wall" -- a festival dedicated to street art.

Lhamzi used the side of a house in the working-class district of Yaacoub Al Mansour for his latest work, a man with six ears and green and pink skin floating in darkness, with clouds that echo Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night".

The 25-year-old, who goes by the alias Bo3bo3, completed his first murals in the seaside city of Agadir four years ago.

But he had not been expecting it to become his main field when he graduated in 2018 from the prestigious National School of Fine Arts in the northern city of Tetouan.

"I never imagined that my work would be visible in the public space," AFP quoted him as saying.

Today, however, he covers walls with bright colors, creating a surrealist world full of references to skating and video games, breaking the monotony of the urban landscape.

In another part of the capital, Imane Droby perches on a stool in front of a school wall, tracing out a realistic portrait of a woman embroidering.

The 36-year-old from Casablanca says she, too, fell into painting murals "sort of by accident".

"I got a taste for it. It's great to transform a blank wall into a work of art," she said.

She added that street art "is difficult for everyone but even more so for women. You have make double the effort to make your mark."

It is an art form that has flourished since the early 2000s in Morocco's commercial capital of Casablanca.

A decade later in 2013, the Sbagha Bagha festival stirred a new level of public interest in murals.

"At first it was really complicated, because unlike graffiti or stenciling, painting murals requires organization," said Salah Malouli, artistic director of Sbagha Bagha and Jidar.

"At the time, nobody felt comfortable working in public. There was lots of apprehension."

But today both residents and institutions show more interest in murals, Malouli said, and in recent years the artworks have graced walls not just in big cities like tourist hub Marrakesh but also in more remote areas.

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Varieties

Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
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Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature -- which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July — is the first ever to take place.

None has ever been seen alive at sea.

The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. They don’t know how this one died.

Over the next week, researchers studying the 5-meter (16-foot) -long male at an agricultural research center near the city of Dunedin hope to find out.

“There may be parasites completely new to science that just live in this whale,” said van Helden, who thrilled at the chance of learning how the species produces sound and what it eats. “Who knows what we’ll discover?”

Only six other spade-toothed whales have ever been found, but all those discovered intact were buried before DNA testing could verify their identification.

New Zealand is a whale-stranding hotspot, with more than 5,000 episodes recorded since 1840, according to the Department of Conservation. The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand’s Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island in 1986.

DNA sequencing in 2002 proved that all three specimens were of the same species — and that it was distinct from other beaked whales. But researchers studying the mammal couldn’t confirm whether the species was extinct until 2010, when two whole spade-toothed whales, both dead, washed up on a New Zealand beach. But none has been studied before.

On Monday, the seventh of its kind, surrounded by white-aproned scientists who were measuring and photographing, appeared relatively unblemished, giving no clue about its death. Researchers pointed out marks from cookiecutter sharks — normal, they said, and not the cause.

The dissection will be quiet, methodical and slower than usual, because it is being undertaken in partnership with Māori, New Zealand's Indigenous people. To Māori, whales are a taonga -– a precious treasure -– and the creature will be treated with the reverence afforded to an ancestor.

Members of the local iwi, or tribe, will be present throughout the dissection and consulted at each turn, allowing them to share traditional knowledge and observe customs, such as saying a karakia -– a prayer -– over the creature before the study begins.

“According to our beliefs and our traditions, this whale is a gift of Tangaroa, deity of the ocean,” said Tumai Cassidy from the local people Te Rūnanga Ōtākou. “It’s very important for us to respect that gift and to honor the whale.”

The iwi will keep the jawbone and teeth of the whale at the end of the dissection, before its skeleton is displayed in a museum. 3D printing will be used to replicate those parts, using a CT scan taken of the whale’s head this week.

“It all builds a richer picture for that species but also tells us how it interacts with our oceans,” Cassidy said.

It’s thought that spade-toothed whales live in the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches. Beaked whales are the ocean's deepest divers for food, and the spade-toothed may rarely surface, adding to its mystery.

The assembled scientists on Monday included a few who had traveled from abroad to see the whale, which was put in refrigerated storage after its discovery.

“What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived,” said Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “In discovering how they live, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition.”