Introduction to Our
Our collaboration brings together the unique perspectives of Haritz and Zerrou, two artists whose practices intersect around themes of identity, memory, and inclusion. Rooted in both community engagement and symbolic exploration, their joint work creates a dialogue between artistic disciplines, cultural narratives, and social realities. By merging their complementary approaches, they aim to spark reflection, encourage participation, and offer new ways of seeing and connecting across borders.
Aglaia Haritz
Aglaia Haritz grew up in Vira Gambarogno and graduated from the ENSA School of Art in Limoges. She has lived in Berlin and Zurich as an artist and led the social-artistic project Embroiderers of Actuality, often traveling throughout Mediterranean countries.
Since 2006, she has worked with various organizations supporting people with disabilities in Switzerland (PluSport, Procap, Inclusion Handicap Ticino) and in Germany (Lebenshilfe). From 2010 onward, she was responsible for organizing vacation groups.
She completed training in art therapy at the Institute for Humanistic Art Therapy (IHK) in Zurich, based on the method developed by Bettina Egger. In 2018, she earned a diploma in Solution-Oriented Painting (LOM), and in 2016 she received certification in Person-Oriented Painting (POM).
Since 2017, she has been working as an accessibility and inclusion officer at LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, collaborating especially with the Museo d’Arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI).
Abdelaziz Zerrou
Born in Casablanca, Swiss-Moroccan transdisciplinary artist Zerrou graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan and currently lives and works between Casablanca and Vira Gambarogno.
His artistic practice ranges from video to installation, from sculpture to drawing, focusing on universal symbolic figures, their graphic representations, and the interplay between language, history, and visual culture. Zerrou actively engages with local communities to address both global and local contemporary issues. His fascination with the power of symbols, words, and collective memory forms the foundation of an artistic approach that deconstructs and reinterprets the imagery shaping our collective consciousness, challenging perceptions and inviting critical reflection.
By exploring themes such as identity, political structures, and cultural narratives, his work recontextualizes familiar symbols within new aesthetic discourses. Through mixed media techniques, he plays with layers of meaning, evoking tensions between visibility and invisibility, past and present, power and vulnerability.
Zerrou has exhibited at institutions including the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat, the Museum of Photography and Visual Arts in Marrakech, the New Art Exchange in Nottingham, UK, and La Regionale at Villa Ciani in Lugano.
He has participated in major residencies such as the Dar Al Ma’mûn Foundation in Marrakech, the European Capital of Culture in Valletta, Malta, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and the HYam Prize in Hydra.