El Mehdi’s Art Expresses Queerness Through His Moroccan Heritage

Men in white gandouras are lined up in a Moroccan Riad. In rhythm with the hum of a male voice, they pour tea from one glass into the other, a familiar gesture many Moroccan parents use to cool tea before giving it to their children. The camera glides past them and alongside a wall with blue and orange tiles, reaching the courtyard. In its center, a shimmering man is sitting on a fountain, wearing a white caftan and holding a perfectly polished silver tray. “El kass hlou,” he sings; the cup is sweet. 

As his voice layers over itself, creating a swelling soundscape alongside simple percussion, another shot shows the man in a red room, loosely wrapped in black cloth. He is wearing a tarboush with a long ponytail and dancing with two silver tea pots; back in the courtyard, he collects the men’s empty tea glasses on his tray before kneeling while hot mint tea is poured into his mouth. “You wanted me in hell,” he says in English, then switches to French and Darija to recount how he indeed went to hell, but not because he was sent: I only went to heat the tea.

These visuals are from El Mehdi’s El Film, a bold and visually stunning assertion of queer Moroccan identity. 

El Mehdi was born in Morocco and later migrated to Canada. El Film is the visual throughline for his debut EP, Salam, dripping with symbolism rooted in tradition and in everyday objects used in Morocco. 

Upon its release, some critics saw these visuals as a form of self-orientalization or self-fetishization. But El Mehdi is too much of an intentional perfectionist to rely on Morocco’s beautiful aesthetics without using them to carry a profound message. 

“I’m not showing tea, because I’m encouraging people to drink mint tea,” he tells OkayAfrica with a laugh. The tea refers to “El Kass Hlou,” a Moroccan song by Houcine Slaoui from the 1930s. The song has been reinvented many times, but in his research, El Mehdi found that the original lyrics referred to a cup of alcohol, even though later versions sing about tea. 

“It’s interesting how this has been censored. A song that was written one hundred years ago talked about things that we don’t believe are part of our society now,” he says. “So I decided to reinterpret Slaoui’s version.” 

In El Film, El Mehdi’s silver platter is unbreakable, unlike the men’s tea glasses. He uses the platter to collect and reunite the glasses, doing away with individualism. When he speaks while tea is being poured into his mouth, he shows that cultural transmission is not passive: he can drink culture and still say what he wants. 

El Mehdi shows skin both physically in El Film and sonically on the EP’s final track; his disarming nudity proves that he has nothing to hide anymore.  Wearing a platform version of the balgha, the yellow leather slippers, he asserts that it is possible to grow while staying rooted in culture. According to El Mehdi, it is exactly this play with sensuality and tradition that draws the accusations of orientalism. 

“Once you combine tradition and culture with sensuality, people tend to go to orientalism. But how can we reclaim autonomy over our bodies and sexualities and create more nuanced representations if our expressions are always framed through questions of modesty, religion, or colonialism? ” he asks. 

“If we continue to accept colonialism to guide our self-representation and freedom, when do we actually take back power? Will I never be free to do what I want with my own body because it was once sexualised? Or should I have to abandon cultural symbols that countless Moroccan artists continue to use, simply because they're assumed to be incompatible with my form of expression?”

El Mehdi has worked up to this moment his whole life. From drawing scenes of Disney movies as a child to studying visual arts as an adult, he has tried his hand at sculpting, photography, and acting. “I used to write songs when I was young, but I never had the confidence to sing them,” he says. “Drawing is intimate, but when you sing, you’re heard, and you’re seen.” 

Once he built the confidence to break that barrier, his artistic mediums started to merge. An image becomes a song, a word inspires a video. The timeline for these projects can span years because El Mehdi is a perfectionist who crafts his own costumes and involves himself in every aspect of the project. 

The EP’s visuals are a reclamation of several parts that make up El Mehdi. “My dad is Amazigh, but the language and culture were never passed down,” he says. “I was never able to communicate with my dad’s side because they spoke Shilha and I spoke Darija.” 

As an adult, he reconnected with his cousins, communicating in English, and realized how close he felt to them and their culture. “There’s less religion and more connection to nature, to themselves and one another,” he says. “We were colonized by Europe, but there was also Arab colonization and Islamization before that. It feels like something has been taken away from us because, growing up, Arab culture was seen as superior. It’s only in recent years that this has changed.” 

Filming the music video for “Encore,” track four on the EP, was an opportunity for El Mehdi to learn about his heritage. Trapped on the roof of a fortress with immaculate white walls, he is wearing traditional Amazigh jewelry from the Aït Atta tribe he descends from, borrowed from the Pierre Bergé Museum of Berber Arts in Marrakech. 

“My grandmother used to wear these big bracelets; they were her dowry,” he explains. “She used to wear it every day, even to work. When I wore it for the music video, it was so heavy, and I had bruises on my hands.” 

These bruises were a testament to the reason El Mehdi wrote “Encore,” a song about being stuck in a pattern; about how our societies’ supposed strengths can become a prison. “I grew up feeling like I had no control over my life, my body and my choices,” he says. “And every time I came out of harmful coping mechanisms, I would fall back into it.”

The fortress is a symbol of the barriers he erected, separating him from the city and all its possibilities. No matter how often he jumps off, he lands back on its roof, always seeing the world from afar. He wears heavy silver jewelry to hide the fact that his own skin is bruised. 

Salam was El Mehdi’s introduction to the world, showing us where he came from and where he is heading. From the rooftop in “Encore,” he has stepped into the Riad of El Film, taking his place amongst the people and preparing to enter the streets. This introduction took immense courage because entering Morocco’s streets as an openly queer man is venturing into largely unexplored territory. 

The EP’s release prompted many queer Moroccans to reach out and share that it made them feel seen and hopeful, but it also triggered hate and criticism. “I don’t think it’s queerness alone,” he says. “I think it’s because it’s tied to culture. My goal is to make people ask themselves, ‘What is it that makes me so uncomfortable? Where does this frustration come from?’” 

While it has not always been easy to navigate the response to Salam, El Mehdi believes that his pushing of boundaries will help make more room for others. “I hope that what I'm doing creates more space for people to be themselves without fear or shame,” he says. “My dual nationality gives me a level of safety that many queer Moroccans don't have, so I want to use that privilege to help move things forward.” 

On Salam, he sings, “They say it takes time, but you’re wasting mine.” “How many lives are we going to waste?” he asks. “If I felt safe to live my life full-time in Morocco, this is where I’d want to stay. The fact that I have to choose between being myself and belonging to my homeland … it’s a heartbreak for a lot of people.”

El Mehdi’s art is strikingly and intentionally beautiful, despite the pain that lies behind many of the stories he tells. “I want to show that when we merge culture and tradition with queerness and fluidity, it’s harmonious,” he says. “It’s important to make it look like something that will add and not take away from our culture. Diversity is what makes Morocco rich, so having even more diversity is only going to make it richer. There's not only one specific Morocco.”