Mous Lamrabat's Mousganistan

Moroccan-Belgian photographer Mous Lamrabat created Mousganistan, a fantasy world in his head and "utopian frame of love" (via), a "place where life is at peace and people are loved, no matter where you are from" (via), a place that is "free, real and easy going" (via). 

Asked what it takes a person to immigrate to this place, why, and where it is, Lamrabat replies: "pffff, man. mousganistan is a utopia, it’s a place in my head and sometimes it's my escape from the world. i have been going there a lot lately. there are so many things going wrong in the world at this moment. some people can take it and deal with it but i can’t. it literally depresses me. when i escape to this place that i created in my head, it feels like home and i feel untouchable. it’s a space where i can make sense of everything and search for solutions. it’s not possible to change the world on your own but i do what i can by sharing my messages. the most important one is still: “life shouldn’t be hard”. i feel we need to go back to the purest forms of humanity and see how “simple” it all can be… and that’s how you get into mousganistan." Mous Lamrabat

About Mousghanistan: "It’s something I’m fighting for the next generation – to be themselves and be proud of where they come from. I remember we would go on school trips and my mom made sandwiches with homemade Moroccan bread and ingredients no one ever saw. I’d hide it and go eat on my own. I didn’t know it back then, but right now, it’s much better than my cheese sandwich. These are the things that are important to me. You have different things growing up but you should embrace them. I’m super proud that I’ve seen a lot of young MENA artists doing that recently. They mix things with where they come from and the world they live in. It’s nice to see that promise in them. In an art form, you can do much more than in real life. If you see war images on the news or on your phone, people are so used to it. We have a filter for it. If you take problems and put them in a gallery or museum, it’s different. People stand there and try to understand them."
Mous Lamrabat

photographs via and via and via

Mous Lamrabat. Too Moroccan, Too European.

"as a child of first generation immigrants, there is always a point in your life where you feel like you don’t fit in anywhere; not in the country you were born in nor in the country you were raised in. i felt like i was too moroccan to fit in as a belgian and too european to fit in as a moroccan, and this is something that almost every immigrant has to deal with. wherever you want to live on this planet, you will always feel like an outsider...

... as a result, we do our very best to be accepted and to be “normal”, consciously or subconsciously. luckily, at some point, i didn’t want to do that anymore. i started questioning (and still do till this day) the concept of “normal” and all the standards and rules that society imposed on us. since then, everything changed for me: the way i look at things, the way i act, the way i work, the way i think creatively… my work is a big basket of things that interest me and that mean something to me on a deeper level. so, since i grew up in europe and lived day in and day out in a super-traditional house hold, playing basketball, listening to hip-hop, watching cartoons… these are the things that made me who i am and this is the person you see within my work. morocco is an important and influential place for me as well because when i needed to think a lot about what i actually wanted to do or be, i spent 4 months in morocco and everything came together. i realized there is not a “right” way to do things. you need to know what the right way is for you!"
Mous Lamrabat

"I see it [representing the Middle East] as my responsibility. I’ll do a lot for the North African, African, Arab world because I am all of these. My main goal is to unite people. That was the cool thing about my first exhibition, it had all colours and ages. I was putting very loud music every weekend in the exhibition. Sometimes young Moroccan women were dancing and all these other people were just so intrigued. They were clapping and sometimes they’d even join in. Seeing all these people unite in the space that I created made me wish that I could have an exhibition that spread all over the world – just to imagine that effect."
Mous Lamrabat

"We as Arabs/North Africans/Muslims are not represented in a good way. So yeah, I want to show a new side of us that is new for the West, and maybe even to ourselves. Putting all these different cultures together attracts a bigger audience because a lot of different minorities and majorities recognize something familiar in the images. So, when I have an exhibition, I really enjoy seeing all these cultures, colors, and ages coming together for something that I created for them. It makes me feel like a kid with divorced parents trying to get them back together."
Mous Lamrabat

"At some point, I was just a fashion photographer. I was just doing what people asked of me. So, I took an eight-month break. No photography – just letting it happen. All of a sudden it was right there in front of me. I had been doing it since I was a teenager. This is me. This is what I should do – show that we can be one person with different identities."
Mous Lamrabat

Asked about growing up as a Moroccan-Belgian living in-between two worlds and how it first came to him to merge his two cultural backgrounds together: "I think I started mixing the two when I started looking for my own DNA. I didn’t know which one to choose. Should I go more towards the West and do fashion photography like everybody else, or should I start shooting more documentary-style photos in places that are close to me like Morocco? After a long period of thinking I decided I didn’t want to choose between the two! So, I just did both, simply because I love doing both."
Mous Lamrabat

"I have a soft heart. When I have to create an editorial, I really can’t ignore what’s going on in the world. I want to create images that we’d be proud of 10 years later. For me, that’s the best part about being a fashion photographer – anything could be fashion, and you could use that. Racism is something that I’m very sensitive to because I’ve experienced it. I used to live in a city that was quite racist, and I saw a lot and I’ve been through a lot. As for women, I think that women are super beings. I have a lot of women in my life, with have five sisters and my mom. I think that’s the reason why I’m quite sensitive to and respect women. As for our religion, well, it’s tough. I don’t know who did the ‘marketing plan’ of not counting Arabs or Muslims as equals with the rest of the world, but that’s still the case. For example, if you see an Arab country being bombed and people dying, the reactions aren’t always the same as if it were a Western country. I think there’s a mentality where they think that, in Arab countries, people are ‘used to it’. Is an Arab life or a Muslim life not worth as much as any other?"
Mous Lamrabat

"i do believe in the concept of cultural appropriation but it also depends on why you are doing it. if it's for your own benefit i think it’s a definite no-go. but, if you are interested in different cultures and you visit these places and you create something with the people that are a part of said culture without any commercial intent behind it… then i feel like it’s genuine interest rather than cultural appropriation. the commercial part is a big factor for me here. but that’s personal, everybody draws their own line."
Mous Lamrabat

"you’ve been a vocal supporter of the black lives matters movement. in your opinion, how relevant is that movement to the rest of the world and why? this shouldn’t even be a question. the blm movement is super relevant… as relevant as the air we breathe. it may sound a bit corny, but everyone should be treated equal. no matter who, what, where, how... even if it felt like a flaw growing up, not to be “normal” (or white in my case), i’m blessed, and after all these years i can say: “i’m very happy and i’m very lucky that i’m a person of colour”."
Mous Lamrabat

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photographs by Mous Lamrabat via and via and via 

Mous Lamrabat. His Photography, the "Orient", the West, and the Third Culture.

Moroccan-Belgian photographer and "third-culture kid" Mous Lamrabat "fuses his North African background with western references" (via). Inspired by the identity crises he had coming from many places at once and growing up with and between two worlds and, at the same time, in a third culture, in his work, he blends the lines between cultures. Lamrabat turns the crises of identity into an opportunity for beauty (via and via and via).

"i also like to connect different parts of the world, namely the “west” and the “orient” because i’m both. as a kid, i loved wearing djellabas and rocking them with my jordan sneakers. it felt “cool” at that time because that’s who i was: a mixture of identities. doesn’t it make sense that your “idea-basket” gets larger when you live in different cultures or you live in multiple places in the world?"
Mous Lamrabat

Asked what aspect of western culture he would eliminate if he could: "this is a dangerous question but i’ll try to be as honest as possible. i traveled many times and to many places around the world and the thing that bothers me most, is when i see europeans in foreign countries looking at the locals’ way of living as though it’s not normal. everybody on this planet has their own “normal” and that’s what’s most interesting about our planet. so, if i can eliminate something it would be that western people should stop acting like their way is the best way."
Mous Lamrabat

... and what aspect of "oriental" culture he would eliminate: "it's sad to say but there is a lot of racism within the oriental culture. not towards other continents but more within. i can’t say what the source of this racism is, but it's painful to see that there is no unity within this big region. we would be one of the strongest and richest part of the world."
Mous Lamrabat

Asked if westernisation was a positive or negative thing: "i thought about it a lot and i must say that i’m not a fan. who are “we” to say that our way is the best way and how the whole world should function? i’m more interested in getting to know different ways/systems of living instead of only knowing one, because i really don’t believe we were put on this planet to work hard all our life to pay off debts. i would love to visit another planet one day to see what their way is."
Mous Lamrabat

"The West gives you the feeling that you are different but that’s fine. It’s good. I have two worlds that I live in and, as a creative, it’s the best thing that you can have. This is what I try to promote in my work for the next generations. Don’t sell yourself out just to be accepted more. Crafting that individuality can be hard. Take social media. It can feel like it’s trying to shape one person, one identity. The more you practice that way of thinking, the more it becomes normal. Then you have this big group of people who think the same, look the same, are the same."
Mous Lamrabat

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photographs via and via