As soon as I started teaching, I realized how socially and economically trapped my pupils were. They’re at school because it’s compulsory, but they have no prospects for the future because they come from disadvantaged social backgrounds that don’t help them to blossom. Most of these students end up leaving high school before the baccalaureate, which they don’t manage to obtain. The boys end up working (laborers, farmers, security guards) and the girls end up getting married for the luckiest of them. The situation is terrible, and nothing is being done at the political level to improve or change the fate of these people, who have resigned to social fatalism for several decades. As an artist, I can’t be insensitive to all these dramatic situations which, for want of action, I can only denounce artistically and with the means at hand. 

(Hicham Benohoud in: «People are resigned to social fatalism» – Hicham Benohoud’s work depicts Morocco, LAMPOON, August 28, 2023)