Ghizlane Sahli was born in 1973 in Meknes, Morocco.
Ghizlane Sahli embroiders, sculpts, and draws. Through her work, she narrates an inner, organic journey imbued with a universal dimension.
Drawing on ancestral techniques and the know-how of the craftswomen around her, she develops contemporary ideas. Together, they create three-dimensional embroidery, most notably through the Alvéole, using waste materials she collects.
The Alvéole is the elemental particle of her work. It is the atom that constitutes matter, the cell whose accumulation and proliferation generate the artwork. Ghizlane explores this by playing with materials, scales, and volumes.
She uses thread—silk, wool, plastic, or metal—to weave and celebrate the subjects that inspire her: the human body in general, and the female body in its intimacy.
Inspired by metaphors of nature, Ghizlane develops her artistic language to express her inner world and emotions—pure emotion, stripped of religious, social, educational, or generic contributions.
After studying architecture in Paris, Ghizlane Sahli returned to Morocco and settled in Marrakech. Passionate about embroidery and textiles, she opened a textile design studio, surrounding herself with artisans. Immersed in this universe for seven years, she developed a distinctive perspective on the world of thread that fascinates her. In 2009, she was awarded the Creation Prize at the Colors Trophy.
In 2012, following the creation of a dress made from waste materials (trash bags, cans, plastic bottles) for Marrakech Mag, Ghizlane decided to close her embroidery studio and devote herself fully to artistic creation. Alongside her sister and two photographer friends, she co-founded the collective Zbel Manifesto, which works primarily with waste. The collective participated in the Marrakech Biennale in 2014, presenting an installation entitled Pimp my Garbage, and was later invited to the inaugural exhibition of the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat (Morocco).
Today, Ghizlane continues her work with the help of craftswomen, together seeking new ways of working with silk thread. She envisions poetic and dreamlike worlds where she can experiment and build bridges between her three passions: space and volume, inherited from her architectural training; silk thread, rooted in her commitment to embroidery; and the environment, born of her personal concerns about sustainability and the future of the planet. She seeks to transform matter, to magnify it, and to imbue it with meaning.
Her works are part of numerous collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (United Kingdom), the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (Morocco), Galila’s POC Museum (Belgium), and Fondation H (France & Madagascar).
Ghizlane Sahli lives and works in Marrakech, Morocco.