Mille et un bijoux du Maghreb

Where are the jewels of the Maghreb? And the know-how behind them? Have we forgotten the muscle memory involved in making them? And how should they be worn? What about museums?

In the workshop

making & storytelling

we seek to draw on shared memories and stories to awaken dormant gestures, forms and rituals, whose transmission was broken by colonialism.

This invitation is addressed especially to people who have a piece of jewelry from the Maghreb, a jewelry component, a photo of this kind of jewelry, or a story or memory connected to such a piece, and who would like to share it as part of this workshop.

Participants will gather around a map that traces, through jewelry, the Algiers neighborhood—destroyed at the beginning of the French colonization of Algeria—where goldsmiths, bookbinders and other craftspeople had been established for centuries.

Along with an object or photo to share, participants are invited to bring all kinds of metal items to the workshop (a key, a nut or something else), broken jewelry, beads or other objects they would like to put together so others can draw on them for their own creations.

The workshop is free and will be filmed by the participants.

The workshop will explore several themes covered in the book «

The Resistance of Jewelry - Against Colonial Geographies

» (Ròt-Bò-Krik, Sète, 2022).

This project is part of the excellence chair

Inhabiting the Jewish-Muslim World

AMX-23-CEI-015) - AMidex (Aix-Marseille University, hosted within the Norbert Elias Center (UMR8562).