Fifteen Years Homeless, Then the Palais de Tokyo

Abdelmajid Mehdi was born in Taza, Morocco, in 1950. At 20 he left for France, where he had been told there was work in the automobile industry. The promised job did not materialise. He was sent to a rag factory, which he refused, and he eventually worked at a plywood and PVC factory in Normandy. He says he has not been back to Morocco since 1996, and that he missed the deaths of his mother and father.

From 2007 to 2022 he was homeless. In Poitiers he was first given shelter for about four years, but he then ended up back on the streets. He moved through Paris and its surrounding region, including Clichy and Vitry, and spent his nights sleeping in a small car. Even folded up in that car, he kept making art, drawing and studying.

During the day he read newspapers and drew in libraries. He credits his own willpower for getting him through, and he describes the period as one in which he was building towards the future he hoped to create once he had stable housing.

The first step out came when neighbours offered him a caravan to live in. With help from a friend, Shérazade, and others, he has had stable housing since December 2022. He is now an artist and architect, and his work was shown in Mohamed Bourouissa's Signal exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, from 16 February to 30 June 2024. Some specialists call his work outsider art. For about ten years he has been designing futuristic architectural projects for Morocco, which he hopes to present to the government or the Royal Palace, and he hopes to exhibit in Morocco, where he last showed his work in Taza at the age of 16.