Amina Agueznay

Amina Agueznay (born 1963 in Casablanca, Morocco) is a Moroccan visual artist and trained architect, known for her contemporary artworks. Her work has included jewellery designs and art installations, incorporating elements of Moroccan cultural heritage as well as materials such as textile, paper, rose petals or burned plastic bags. In several exhibitions, including the 2026 Venice Biennale, she has created site-specific artistic installations.

Apart from her participation in art and fashion shows in Morocco and Europe, her work has been featured in art catalogues, magazines and in the British newspaper Financial Times. Among others, her creations have been documented by Moroccan photographer Leila Alaoui. Mother and daughter have created some artworks together, for example the site-specific exhibition Metamorphosis at the Attijariwafa Bank Foundation in Rabat 2018. Having graduated from secondary school in Casablanca, Agueznay studied in the US and obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Architecture from the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, in 1989. After fifteen years in the US and having worked there as an architect, she returned to Morocco in 1997 and has since been living and working in Marrakesh.

Artistic career

Following a first training in jewellery design in the US, she developed this type of artistic creation in contemporary style after her return to Casablanca, using traditional Moroccan jewellery and locally sourced materials. In workshops for handicrafts that she taught for government agencies, she also worked with craftspeople active as weavers, woodworkers, leatherworkers, basketry weavers and other crafts. This experience became another part of her artistic influences.

In her first collection for the annual Kaftan fashion show in Morocco in 2003, she turned to materials such as rose petals, pieces of wood and cinnamon sticks and presented her jewellery together with fashion designer Noureddine Amir. For the 10th edition of the Kaftan event in 2006, she made another collection entirely out of paper, inspired by her earlier work as an architect. The same year, she created an hommage to the French-Tunisian fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa in the shape of a large collier necklace of red and black strings and metallic elements.

As an artistic statement on environmental pollution, her 2012 collection was made out of burned plastic bags. According to M. Angela Jansen, she has often been misunderstood in Moroccan society for her unconventional ideas, and even accused of not being Moroccan. To such criticism, she has replied: "I could say for example that the red stones remind me of Marrakesh and the white ones of Casablanca. But even if so, it is an unconscious process and should not be used to justify the Moroccanness on my work."

For Morocco's first participation ever at the Venice Biennale in 2026, Agueznay created a 300 sq. m. installation titled Asetta (“loom” and “ritual of weaving”) in the Amazigh language. This work, created with textiles and traditional accessories by many women artisans, including weavers, beadworkers and embroiderers, was presented as "an exploration of the transmission of Morocco’s traditional craftsmanship and shared memory."

Selected exhibitions Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France, 1999 Galerie Les Atlassides, Morocco, 2005 Art and Design, World Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2005 Solo show at FestiMode Fashion Week, Casablanca, 2007 Fondation Société Générale art gallery, Casablanca, 2016 Festival of Contemporary Art Art-O-Rama, Marseille, France, 2017 Attijariwafa Bank Foundation, Rabat, Morocco, 2018 Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rabat, 2019 Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Oslo, Norway, 2019 Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, 2019 Marrakesh Museum of Contemporary Art (MACAAL), Marrakesh, 2019-2020 Musée National de l'Histoire de l'Immigration, Paris, 2021 Venice Biennale 2026, Moroccan Pavillion