In wild, living Moroccan colours

When he and two friends clubbed together to buy a riad (traditional Moroccan house) in Marrakech in the late-1990s, artist and designer Hassan Hajjaj used it chiefly to throw wild parties.

It shot up in value, though, and by 2002, he had the funds to buy another, this time alone, which he turned into an opulent home and studio. Since then, the space, which follows the traditional riad structure of a square within a square surrounding a courtyard, has become an art gallery, shop and tea room, too. Hassan, 55, who spends about half the year there, designed it from top to bottom.

“When I first saw the place it was only just about liveable, but I had to make more of a mess before I started,’ he says, speaking from the shop he owns in Shoreditch, east London, where he is based for the other half of the year. “I’ve chopped up rooms and moved stairs; remade the ceilings, the floors, the walls. I changed everything.”

Hands-on
It took him four years – partly for financial reasons, but also because everything had to be done by hand. “I was using old materials such as tadelakt (traditional Moroccan plaster that produces a marble-like, waterproof surface), ceramic and wood. And those buildings are old; they tell you what to use. There were certain things I wanted and I kept trying them, but they didn’t work. In the end I had to just go with it – it was a bit like doing up a classic car.”

Riad Yima, as his home is called, is hidden away in Marrakech’s medina, among the spice stalls of Rahba Lakdima. When Hassan moved in, the area wasn’t an artistic one, but since the debut of the Marrakech Biennale in 2004, several galleries have opened nearby. The riad is stuffed with both his artworks (his photographs are in the permanent collections of museums around the world, including the V&A in London, and regularly command up to £15,000 at auction) and his furniture (household objects made from recycled commercial products such as tin cans, flour sacks and crates).

It is open to the public six days a week and known locally as a cool place to hang out – Hassan’s pop-culture-inspired creations have led to his being dubbed Morocco’s Andy Warhol – and customers and friends come to Riad Yima to lounge on technicolour pouffes and cushions while flicking through art books and sipping mint tea. “It’s not a place you’d stumble across,” Hassan says, “so the people who come, come because they’ve sought it out, and they spend a long time here.”

Hassan was born and grew up in Morocco, in the seaside town of Larache, about 300 miles north of Marrakech. He remembers that period of his life as ‘barefooted freedom, and full of games’. His parents moved him and his two sisters to London when Hassan was 14.

“I didn’t speak English, and it was hard to fit in,” he says, “but luckily at that age, you can adapt quickly, and I found my way.” The family returned to Morocco every year, but when he was 19, Hassan decided he wanted to see the rest of the world. It was a decade before he would visit Morocco again. “Everything I had left behind was still there, but it was no longer familiar. Everything stood out – bottles of juice, cigarette packaging, tins of cooking oil, washing-powder logos. That’s when I became interested in product design.”

To make his furniture a logo-festooned, rainbow-hued range that includes lamps, chairs, tables and stools, Hassan sources everything himself, usually from local markets in Marrakech. Some of the original materials feature patterns and typography dating from the 1950s and ’60s, so his pieces blend old and new in beautiful ways. “I like to work with the traditional and make it look contemporary,” he says. “There’s also a bit of humour and cheekiness in there.”

His photographic portraits, which are shot against vibrantly patterned mosaic or textile backgrounds, their subjects in arresting clothing, are partly inspired by the work of the Malian photographer Malick Sidibé. Though they are often of people he knows, Hassan has also set up his portable backdrops on the streets of Morocco and London, as well as Paris, New York, LA and Dubai.

“I didn’t study art; I didn’t plan to be an artist,’ he says. I’ve run underground club nights, I’ve owned a clothes shop, I’ve driven a van. I was always just doing this and that, and one thing led to another. I bought a camera from a friend in the late-1980s, and my love of photography brought me here.”

When we speak, he is about to get on a plane to New York to prepare for a solo show next year, and he’s back and forth shooting a documentary in Morocco. He hasn’t had a holiday in 10 years, “but I’m not going to complain. I find something that inspires me wherever I go – music, film, art, food, markets, sound, cold, hot, sad, happy – it all comes together in my work,” he adds.