Zainab Fasiki


Zainab Fasiki is a Moroccan comics artist, mechanical engineer, activist for women's rights and "gender democracy activist" from Fez.

Early life

She was born on 21 July 1994. She is the youngest of six brothers.

Career

She is best known for her collection of drawing called the Hshouma project created in 2018, depicting nude women and calling out double standards and sexual taboos. Hshouma was first exhibited in Madrid, Spain. Her work aims to fight censorship, taboos and shame in Morocco. She is also founder of the collective /Women Power/ that sponsors 20 women to take part in workshops. In 2014, she moved to Casablanca, where she currently lives.
She started drawing when she was four years old. Many of Fasiki's illustrations are self-portraits often nude portrayed in the hammam or painted as characters such as Wonder Woman. One of her most iconic images is a nude, all green figure of herself keeping watch over Casablanca. In her comics, the women she draws do not have because she says "I see women as statues in my society and I want to free them." I want them to be free human beings. She claims she has "never felt free" in Morocco or with her paintings as printers in Morocco are reluctant to print her work. She prefers to portray women undressed, strong, and unafraid. Through her images she tries to normalize women's bodies in art and media by countering the objectification and sexualization of women that is prevalent in Morocco and in the Middle East region.
In October 2018, she partnered with a UN Refugee Agency to animate a story of the lives of four refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa including one woman subjected to female genital mutilation. In November 2018, her work was exhibited at Le Cube Gallery in Rabat.
In October 2019, she was named a TIME magazine Next Generation Leader for her comic book Hshouma. The title addresses the shame culture and works to be a "guidebook" and discuss gender based violence, censorship and sexuality.

Printed works