Ya Siniya! (2020 - 2022)

Oh, tea tray!

Ya Siniya! is the title of a song by one of Morocco’s most iconic musical groups: Nass El Ghiwane. This cry could be translated as “Oh, tea tray!” but, as its members have pointed out, this translation falls short. The tea tray carries such a significant social weight that, far from being an ordinary object, it becomes a symbol of unity. For this reason, the band proposed that the title be translated as “The pleasure of sharing.”

With this philosophy in mind, the author begins a project that analyzes the social role of tea, the national drink par excellence, in migration. Through this reddish brew, the aim is to navigate migratory grief (also known as the Ulysses Syndrome) experienced by much of the Moroccan migrant population in Spain, as it becomes an object of grief that takes on the emotional role of what is lost.

Tea connects the migrant to their homeland and, being a social drink, is always shared in the company of others who have also migrated. ¡Ya Siniya! seeks to delve into this uncertainty, distance, and abandonment due to survival, using photography and featuring the author’s mother as the protagonist, who emigrated from a small village in the Rif to Spain.

This project is an exploration of grief and the symbols one carries to unknown lands to preserve a piece of their origin, an exploration of the constant feeling of living in a new country that constantly reminds one that they do not belong there, especially when they did not choose to be there, but arrived out of necessity.

Nowadays, if one asks the author’s mother where her home is, she will always answer that it is Morocco, despite having spent more than half of her life in Spain.