In her book “Sortir de terre, une philosophie du vegetal” (2024), philosopher Seloua Luste Boulbina offers a singular synthesis between decolonial theory and ecological theory. In other words, it enables us to think about modes of resilience and coexistence between humans and non-humans (animals, plants, minerals, viruses, etc.) in an era of collapse of natural resources and landscapes.

Said Afifi explores the possibilities and status of digital images through mediums that vary from drawing and painting to new technologies; through subject fields that include geography, topology and marine science. His work invites us to grapple with the blurred boundary between real and virtual spaces, defying the limits of purely ocular and human vision, and questioning scientific vision. In Géomorphologie d’un exo-paysage – relevé 6 (2021), Said Afifi uses paint to rework cartographic and digital images retrieved via Google Earth. The material and pictorial depth add density to an automated imagery produced without subjectivity or sensitivity, monumentalising the infinitesimal details of an abstract, modelled landscape. In this way, the painting manifests perpetual motion in the evolution of the landscape, whether natural (erosion, alteration) or societal, linked to the destructive action of man (extractivism, pollution, construction). In the context of landscapes of Morocco and the Marrakesh region, we can think of the role of digital images in the observation of seismic zones, to prevent earthquakes and other natural disasters. Said Afifi's geomorphologies are more than just post-Internet cartographic exercises. They offer themselves up as places to meditate on the cohabitation of men/women and other living beings in a fragile and precarious ecosystem.