Fatim Zahra Benhamza (*1988, lives and works in Casablanca) is a Moroccan architect and visual artist. Interested in revealing the contemporary urban issues, she observes, questions and reimagines the existing city through architectural drawing, illustration and collage. She has published several essays around these topics. Since 2012, she has been working as an architect in national and international architectural practices in Casablanca and in 2017 she was the editor-in-chief of the national architecture magazine A+E in Morocco. She is co-founder of the MAMMA group and director of exhibitions and events at MAMMA since 2018. Since 2019 she has been part of different artistic residencies in Morocco and abroad such as: Atelier de l’Observatoire (Morocco, Casablanca-2019), Le Cube Independent Room (Morocco, Rabat- 2020), Bibliothek Andreas Züst (Switzerland, Alpenhof–2021), Albalad residency (Saudi Arabia, Jeddah-2022). In 2021 she exhibited her work “Positive Pandemics” at LAAF (Liverpool Arab Arts Festival). In the same year she has been shortlisted along 14 Moroccan artists for the Mustaqbal National Prize for painting and drawing and been part of a collective exhibition at Artorium gallery in Casablanca. In 2022 she exhibited her works “Where is the sun” and “What do you choose to see” at 32bis (Tunis) and at Alte Münze (Berlin). Her master’s degree in architecture from the Ecole supérieur d’architecture de Casablanca (EAC).
In collaboration with Sarri Elfaitouri and Negar Hakim she conceived The Placeless Academy, a platform that aims to question, analyse, and critique the legacy of modern architecture and art in the WANA region in order to produce alternative critical discourse beyond the Western line of thought. For Vienna they develop an exhibition that presents the results of a year-long research in the framework a workshop with different participants.