Tasnim Baghdadi works in multimedia: graphic design, digital illustration, and photography. She is of Moroccan heritage but was born and raised in Cologne, Germany. She see herself not just as someone residing in two cultures, but also as someone who is deeply connected to the Moroccan culture, religion and ancestry of her parents and grandparents. For her, art is a symbolical mirror to our own sub-consciousness. When making art, she says, ‘we first and foremost find ourselves in them’.
These illustrations are character designs for a graphic novel called la bédouine obscure, a fictional version of her journey of hybrid identity. ‘I want my love for different cultural traditions and their art forms to manifest itself in this story, using contrasts to bring all of it together. Rural meets urban; traditions encounter modern ideas and science fiction; spirituality mingles with different religious traditions. In all of that there is a girl and her life’s journey’.
