Portraiture Reimagined: Yasmin Sarnefors Curates Exhibition Challenging Identity Through Ambiguity in Marrakech

Curator Yasmin Sarnefors organized 'What Faces Do Not Say,' an exhibition that redefines portraiture by emphasizing ambiguity, memory, and resistance rather than facial recognition. The show, held from January 22 to February 22, 2026, at La Taverne in Marrakech, Morocco, featured artists from Africa and its diaspora who explore identity through fragmented, transformed, or absent imagery. Sarnefors, drawing from her Moroccan, Spanish, and Swedish background, selected works that question imposed identities and highlight psychological and political dimensions. Artists like Mohamed Saïd Chair, Chama Bekri, Yasmine Laraqui, Beau Disundi Nzazi, Nyaba Léon Ouédraogo, Lassana Sarre, Nadjib Ben Ali, Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, and El Hadi Fekrouni contributed pieces that shift between faces, bodies, landscapes, and archives. The exhibition was staged in an abandoned apartment within La Taverne, a historic restaurant opposite Cinema Le Colisée, to create an accessible, spontaneous viewing experience. Sarnefors aimed to foster uncertainty and multiple interpretations, encouraging viewers to reflect on identity's fluidity and the role of opacity in contemporary representation. The works, ranging from paintings to archival materials, avoid simple definitions, instead revealing inner lives and historical narratives through techniques like fragmentation and disappearance.