Story 03. Sarah Amrani

Sarah Amrani: A Visual Language of Reflection

For this post, we’re staying close to home. We’re highlighting the work of Dutch-Moroccan artist Sarah Amrani, whose photography feels both distant and deeply familiar to us. At Atay Atelier, we’ve always been drawn to art that lives in the in-between: between cultures, between tradition and modern life, between what’s shown and what’s felt. And Sarah’s work captures exactly that.

Fun fact: one of her photographs from the Oujda Series was once the cover of our editor-in-chief’s master’s thesis on the framing of Moroccan art in the Dutch cultural scene. So yes, this one’s personal.

Coming from a mixed cultural background Amrani uses photography and film as tools to explore what it means to live in-between two cultures. Her ongoing Oujda Series, started in 2015 and still evolving, offers a deeply personal look at the rituals and expectations surrounding womanhood, purity, and tradition. Especially within the context of Moroccan weddings, where brides wear seven dresses in one day, each dress representing something: purity, transition, expectation. But in her version, the bride doesn’t beam with joy or nerves. She waits. She watches. And whilst looking at the pictures, we start to question ourselves what that stillness means.

In-between spaces

Sarah has described herself as an “observer” in her own culture: someone familiar with the rituals, but not fully inside them. She is familiar with Moroccan and Islamic traditions, but also raised with Western influences. She often occupies an in-between space, neither fully inside, nor completely outside. That feeling of watching from the edge, of not being quite one or the other, is what gives the Oujda Series its quiet emotional weight. .

Amrani’s aesthetic is restrained but rich. The use of soft textures, delicate jewellery, and symbolic gestures allows her to speak without being loud. The fabrics and composed poses seem to shimmer with elegance, but underneath the surface lies something far more complex: a quiet meditation on identity, tradition, and the strange space between belonging and observing.

The photos are soft and staged, but there’s a tension beneath them. They ask: What happens when tradition is something you inherit but don’t fully understand? Or when your body performs a ritual, your mind questions? Through her visual storytelling, she touches on themes that many with hybrid identities recognize.

From Oujda to FOAM: Expanding the Conversation

Amrani’s first solo museum exhibition at FOAM Amsterdam—Terror of Beauty—builds on the themes introduced in Oujda Series, but shifts the focus to digital beauty. In this body of work, she examines how social media, filters, and AI have begun to reshape the female face into something idealized and disconnected. It’s a natural progression from exploring traditional expectations to confronting contemporary ones.

Where her previous series looks at rituals of the past, Terror of Beauty turns to the present and future, asking: what happens when beauty becomes a performance not just in life, but online? And continues to question the expectations women are being shaped by.

With Oujda Series, Sarah Amrani invites us into a deeply intimate world. It’s a series about waiting, about being watched, about the quiet resistance of simply existing between cultures. One of her most striking abilities is to take beauty—soft and traditional on the one hand, Instagrammable beauty on the other hand—and turn it into a space for critical thought.

Sarah Amrani’s work feels like a conversation we’ve all been trying to have. About who we are. About where we come from. About what we’re expected to be. Her photography gives us a language for that. And maybe even a little space to breathe in between.