On Monday Jouteya of Fès Ain Azliten was on fire. Local firemen worked about 6 hours to control the fire and managed to save about half of the studios.
Artist, Philippe Laleu, told The View From Fez that he has no idea how the "monster fire" started.
"We don t exactly know the origin of this monster fire but hope it proves to be an accident. Our community is still in shock."
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| Three years work goes up in smoke - Philippe Laleu |
Laleu had plenty of reasons to be in shock "My studio has gone and i couldn't save any of my work from the last three years." He was quick to point out the positive side of things. "Our garden was safe, hamdoulilah, and nobody was injured. Today was a great demonstration of solidarity as many people joined us to help a few studios and shops to move what was urgent to save."
As for the future, Laleu is optimistic. "We ll have to talk with the authorities to know how to go on as they have been already asked to help on certain points for this place. We will go on because this country is full of people who believe in good things and this artisan community in just made of incredible good people."
Laleu has had a long record as an artist, and was also the Director of the French Institute between 2005 and 2015. He lives in Fez, and finds constant inspiration in the ancient medina. Laleu is no stranger to challenging situations "I was working in Kobe during the big earthquake they had there, and more than 6,500 people disappeared." The poignancy of people searching for their loved ones, who had been literally lost in the landscape, stayed with him and became the theme of one of his exhibitions in 2016.
The damage will take a long time to clean up before anything can be rebuilt.
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