Curtains Made of handspun and handwoven local Wool

This textile wall piece is the result of a collaboration between memòri studio and all the spinning and weaving craftswomen of the Feija tribe in the Moroccan Anti Atlas.

In the Siroua mountains, and on the plateaus of the Anti-Atlas between the Toubkal range and the desert, a local breed of sheep is known to provide the wool for the carpets of the Aït Ouaouzguit tribes. Known to specialists in tribal weaving, the Siroua sheep was not included in the list of local Moroccan breeds until 2014, yet it is the country’s main wool breed; the Siroua’s silky fleece is intense black, or all white, with particularly long fibres growing up to 30 cm in length.

Less than 100 km from this massif, in a remote village, women weave bridal head veils, which they continue to pass down from generation to generation. This place, where time seems to have stopped, is one of the rare villages in Morocco where women still spin wool by hand with extraordinary finesse.

This piece is the fruit of a collective work – of experiments, of exchanges with the women weavers of the village during several times of residence. The idea is also to question the practices and their transmission and to explore ways of safeguarding and promoting the Siroua wool race.