biography

Born in the industrial town of Khouribga, Aouam is first of all a mechanic on printer's trucks. At that time, he likes saving defectuous books to distribute them to his nephews because he is fond of taking draft papers for covering them with drawings.
However, his mariage failing and him being sent in prison for one month (manslaughter), his factory closes.
Rushed into escheat for unemployment, Aouam stops drawing and takes refuge in drug : Ralhi (the "big brother") can't admit his incapacity to provide for his family needs. The coma he has been in after a high blood pressure will be life-saving : the eldest of his sisters pays his treatment, and Aouam, grateful, detoxyfy himself.

From now on, everyday is a new occasion for a drawing that he gives his nephews or throws out... at least until, recently, a friend of his sister takes interest in him, and preventing his work from the trash, tries hard to make them known.

Holding in one hand a ballpoint pen and using his fingers from the other like a chief, Aouam animates strange characters with pantomime apparances with bodies, sometimes prostrate, sometimes with monstruous stature. These phantasmagoric beings walk around in discarnate sceneries, filled with shadows and dark shapes throwing an oppressive veil on this inscrutable scenery.
The outlines of a rock, the many wrinkles of the ground are an excuse to imaginary : wandering souls, a face, eyes, strange abstraction come take shelter.
It's a matter of playing on the shape-shifting character of the faces, a hand is also a man, slipped into the fingers, shaped by the position of the mitts. This unusual work, very innovative, is a discovery considerable that gives Marocco - after the death of Chaïbia - another major creator brut.