Ikram Bouloum

From Moroccan parents and born in Torelló, Ikram Bouloum (1993) has been living in Barcelona for ten years where she has developed her artistic facet as Dj playing in most of the clubs and parties in the city. Her music sessions are conceived as a form of narrative, a kind of sound literature, and her utopian club is a polyphonic space.

In May 2021, Ikram Bouloum released her first EP, Ha-bb5, which brings together the representation of a tragedy and a birth along five tracks produced by Mans O. The project aims to deploy and counterpose a musical and aesthetic dialogue between the most contemporary Western electronica and a reinterpretation of the popular musical aesthetic and dance of Maghreb, based on the cultural and personal heritage of the artist. Feminist, emancipated and innovative, the music of Ha-bb5 explores a radical sound that destroys the two “establishments” of the dichotomy of the cultural shock, in order to create a space of its own, empowered and safe.

Ikram Bouloum presents Ha-bb5 UPDATE, an exhibition that bring together video, sound and text, organized by Gracias por su visita at Nogueras Blanchard. Ha-bb5 UPDATE unfolds a visual and sound journey through the elements that support and configure the musical narrative of “Ha-bb5”. The exhibition gives prominence to Ha-bb5; it recovers and presents in the foreground the choral voices, the technical meditations, and the symbology that are never protagonists in an EP, nonetheless always important and indispensable. Here her artistic research and interests for the collective process and interdisciplinary collaboration can be felt.

Through six activations (UPDATES) main elements that form the exhibition will emerge and will be pronounced in order to reconstruct the entire plot of Ha-bb5 and re-explain the story with a final performance featured by Mans O.