Mohamed Sleiman Labat is a Sahrawi multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, writer & translator. Born and raised in the Sahrawi refugee camps southwest Algeria. He now runs Motif Art Studio; a small art space built from discarded materials following destructive floods that hit the refugee camps in Tindouf in 2015. His art draws upon the past and present life of the Sahrawi people.
He works across multiple disciplines. Mohamed’s art investigate the multi-layered political, environmental and social issues affecting his local community in the desert and the world at large. He also works on preserving the oral knowledge and traditions of the Sahrawi people. He documents Sahrawi poems, stories, interviews, testimonies and narrations such as the Nomadic Calendar. To decolonize his art and research, he leans on such autochthonous oral references and materials which better represent the Sahrawi people.
