In the pictorial universe of the Moroccan painter Hanane Belhaiba, the colors are fully expressed in all their neighboring nuances with the sunny ardor of the landscapes and the splendors of Moroccan culture and heritage. Like Monet’s Water Lilies, the painting of this inspired visual artist, who lives and works in Casablanca, requires taking a step back: close to the painting, the play of materials, the large flat areas dotted with touches and dots, at the limit of the projection. His works confuse, question, release poetry and spirituality.
Poetic, thrilling, marvelous, dazzling, luminous… It is a diverse carnival of works to which the self-taught Moroccan visual artist Hanane Belhaiba invites us. His painting irresistibly evokes these words from Cézanne: “Art is a harmony parallel to nature”. Thus in his works, we find a dazzling palette where reds, yellows, greens and blues seem to emerge from the circumscribed space of the canvases to draw the viewer into a chromatic whirlwind.
An attentive observer of the world, Hanane was able to gradually free herself from the weight of things, go beyond the play of forms and appearances, to collect what is at the heart of things, choose the spirit of the concrete. But her works have never lost their flavor, this truthfulness which makes the gaze always complicit in the things with which it comes into contact. This is even the origin and reason for his pictorial work, implicitly denouncing the materialism of our era causing the loss of our soul.
This means that Hanane Belhaiba’s work favors both the exterior aspect through its harmony of shapes and colors, and the interior resonance, that of the soul. His work then takes on a completely premonitory contemplative character. In his universe, our artist feels this incessant need to rise and move forward, slowly but surely. It is a question of a perpetual search for the depth of the work which allows spiritual awakening. But above all, Hanane is an artist who takes pleasure in painting as evidenced by the flows of the material and the changes of rhythm in the gestures: sometimes balanced and sober, sometimes lyrical and unleashed.
From an assembly of a multitude of photographic elements or simply the fruit of her imagination, she creates a sufficiently accomplished visual composition to move on to the final stage: painting. After having transferred your image to a canvas, the painting work consists of reworking the entire image to reveal its final appearance by balancing light, contrasts and other material effects. This allows him to better implement his dreamlike universe. It is enough to move a few steps away for the composition to come together, build and reveal its theme.
From this creative process seeking a balance between the need for control and the challenge of the impromptu emerges a great serenity and zenitude. Hanane’s work most closely resembles her soul and her emotions, which are always on edge. The superposition of layers of colors and the nuances of tones give a magical effect to his works. Skies that are sometimes purple, bluish, pinkish or yellowish, velvety or satiny accentuate the captivating ambiance of the atmosphere. Strong and harmonious contrasts, distributed in balance on the surface of the canvases loaded with details, surprise the eye and contribute to the singularity of the whole.
The experience of one’s own universe, which often appears suddenly, authentically and originally manifests the work which pierces time to see and perceive and takes us into the universe of this artist with a pronounced taste for intangible heritage. However, given the importance that this heritage has in the identity and cultural landscape of Morocco, often confronted with the wear and tear of time, Hanane sees herself more than ever called upon to assume a responsibility which goes far beyond the framework of art: the image of national identity.
Technically, our visual artist manipulates the various ingredients and makes her own agglutinants and mediums, according to traditional knowledge, in all techniques. On a plastic level, she integrates forms of a plastically heterogeneous nature to thus place her work in a process of combination, of mixing, which implies new relationships between composition, form and figure.
Finally, empathy, imagination, the heart and wide-open eyes are essential to transmit on the canvas the emotions necessary for dialogue with the recipient of the painting. A real treat for even the most jaded eyes!
Ayoub Akil
