Walk with Grocco

Grocco alias Trick54

Grocco is a multidisciplinary artist from Mohammedia, Morocco. In parallel to graffiti, he has developed a practice of painting and drawing and in recent years has explored in situ installations and interventions in public spaces as a form of continuation of his interventions and research on the street. Grocco uses various artistic media such as painting, drawing, collage, photography, video art, mural painting, installation, etc. in order to deal with subjects such as identity, heritage, environment, madness, sexuality, anthropology, and change.

#walkingonwaste #streetasspace #collectivewalks

People walking through a large area filled with debris and trash under a clear blue sky, with buildings and palm trees in the background.
A person holding up an old, worn, and rusted metal sheet against a clear blue sky with some wispy clouds.
A bundle of tiles tied with string, a purple plastic bag with artificial flowers, and a white plastic shopping bag are placed on a tiled floor.
A desert landscape with fallen ancient columns, palm trees, and distant buildings under a clear blue sky.
Person holding a circular, woven, straw wreath in a trash-filled lot with palm trees and buildings in the background.

Walk with Grocco day 1, site shots, 2023.
Images courtesy of Grocco

Can you give some background to this project?

I worked with Le 18, which is a cultural center based out of a Riad in Marrakech, to develop a project for creating an intervention in public space. It's not a workshop, rather an initiation - an initiation for insitu installations in the public space of Marrakesh. But really, I work with the notion of the street, because although the public space is desired as a place of equality, a utopia, this is not the reality. Due to the complexities of society, and based on people’s background, class, gender etc., the question of who can really access public spaces is important. So the notion of the street is more interesting to me because it expresses something more real somehow, more of a living phenomena. Bringing people from different backgrounds to the street was the main aim of this project. We did an open call for artists, amateurs, or just anyone who wanted to come and work together on creating a street initiation. We gathered a great group for the two days over which the project took place.

On the first day, the group went to the waste land of Marrakesh where people throw away their rubbish. It's a public space between two big Boulevards, surrounded by many new buildings. Previously, it was a farm, an agricultural place with olive trees, palm trees and a lot of vegetables. But the owner sold it to the local authority. Now it's like an in-between space but at the same time intimate. We walked and talked to observe the site. We forgot where we were - we could have been in an ocean or in the wild.

Amongst the waste, we searched for items to collect. We found all kinds of broken artifacts from vegetables, old photographs and simple building materials to items with traditional symbolism or geometric forms. It was interesting to discuss along the way what this trash revealed about the city of Marrakesh. There was no predefined idea about what we going to do with the collected material. We returned to Le 18 to discuss and experiment with how these objects could become installations that would then be placed in the street. A series of works emerged collectively. On the second day, we went into the Medina and scouted locations to place the works, here, the street became our exhibition space.

The walk was a very important part of the project because firstly it was the action that led us outside where we could find our materials in their ‘natural’ state. Walking took us across this waste land which has so many layers, allowing us to witness its complexities. As we walked, in between conversations about the site and task at hand, we also got to know each other, an important but less visible part of the project.

The second stage of the project, installing the works in the street, also required walking. At first we were carrying the works with us, we were wearing some of them whilst we walked, which became a kind of performance in itself. When we were placing them, often we walked past a site without acknowledging it but by walking past it again we realized it was the perfect fit and installed a work there. So walking was part of the curatorial, installation method too.

And then there is the audience, people were walking by all the time, walking was there way of witnessing the interventions.

So walking acted as both an important origin and end point to this project.

What is Walking to this work?

How did the passers-by or the participants of this walk respond?

Firstly, the participants were coming from many different focus points artistically; collage, graffiti, painting, curation, installation. All these elements could be found in the final installations which showed how everyone communicated well and worked collectively.

Then there were the unknowing participants, the people walking on the street. Many asked what we were doing, the locals and the tourists, so it caught people’s attention. Moroccans are very curious but they also hadn’t seen something like this before, it was kind of disturbing - installations as disturbance. With one piece that had lots of ropes incorporated, one guy genuinely asked, is this a serpent?

Old, weathered reddish-orange wall with a small, dark doorway, electrical wires, and six terracotta tiles lined up on the ground.
Group of five young men gathered in front of a large wooden gate on a cobblestone street, some leaning in closely and looking inside the gate.
Man and group of boys on city sidewalk, with photographs in frames decorated with flowers, possibly for a memorial or tribute.
A metal gate painted green with a wire design, set within a pinkish-orange arched doorway. Hanging on the gate is a decorative ring made of woven material with various fabric strips and ropes hanging from it.
A large, old metal door with rivets, framed by wood paneling, decorated with four frames of faux flowers and frames of pictures, with some flowers and debris at the bottom of the door.
A person kneeling on the sidewalk placing an item on a cloth or mat, with an older man standing nearby. The scene is under an archway with people walking in the background.
A woman with long red hair, wearing a beige dress, sits on the ground writing on a notepad by a large, weathered wooden door. Four children and two women stand around her, observing. The children are dressed casually, and the women are also casually dressed, some with backpacks. The scene takes place outdoors on a cobblestone street, likely during a tour or cultural visit.
Broken ceramic dish and an orange marble on a white powdery substance on brick pavement in front of a weathered wooden door.

Walk with Grocco day 2, street installation shots, 2023.
Images courtesy of Grocco.