Jerada is a mining town in Morocco where coal extraction, although officially halted in 2001, continues informally to this day. L’MINA recreates the current work in informal mining pits using a set design created in collaboration with the town’s residents, who perform in their own roles.
Randa Maroufi’s deeply abstracted model worlds — L’MINA is the third part of a trilogy begun with Le Park and Bab Sebta and dedicated to Moroccan cities — are fascinating forays into unknown realms, into depths where the perspectives themselves are refreshing. In Bab Sebta, Maroufi chose a neutral bird’s-eye perspective; here, she creates a space where she pans exclusively from side to side, like an infernal gaze from the depths of the earth, which intensifies the darkness and crushes people. Despite the harshness, there is much poetry in this claustrophobic chaos (a dog growling, people hanging out laundry, playing games and cards, eating and napping), a feeling only interrupted by the sterile, utilitarian images that remind us of the impending horror of working in the mines. The act of mining clandestinely becomes both subversive and political. (Georgiana Mușat)
Born in Casablanca (Morocco), Randa Maroufi is a visual artist and filmmaker. She graduated from the Institut National des Beaux-Arts in Tétouan, the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, and Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains. In 2018, she became a fellow at the Académie de France à Madrid, Casa de Velázquez and the Villa Médicis in Rome in 2025. Her films Le Park (2015) and Bab Sebta (2019), awarded at several festivals, mark the beginning of a trilogy dedicated to three Moroccan cities. L’mina (2025) is the final chapter of this trilogy.
