Soumiya Jalal’s Sustainable Vision in Venice
Heading to Italy this summer? The 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia - is worth a visit. Curated by Carlo Ratti, this year's edition, titled "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective", is on now until 23 November 2025, exploring the intersection of architecture and design.
The exhibition aims to explore how different types of intelligence can be harnessed to address current challenges and shape the future of the built environment. Notably, the Moroccan Pavilion titled Materiae Palimpsest presents a profound meditation on heritage, ecology, and material memory, and among the contributions is a series of textile installations by Moroccan architect and artist Soumiya Jalal, whose handwoven works reimagine the role of textiles within the architectural conversation.
Textile Art by Soumyia Jalal. Photos by Venice Documentation Project - Samuele Cherubini, Courtesy of the Pavilion of the Kingdom of Morocco.
Jalal’s practice is grounded in place - in the earth, quite literally. Using fibres like hemp, raffia, sisal, and organic cotton, her work draws directly from Morocco’s long tradition of earth architecture. These textiles don’t simply reference built forms; they seem to emerge from them. Coarse and fibrous, yet sensitive to light and touch, they echo the textures of rammed earth walls, the shifting tones of adobe, the rough grain of hand-applied plaster. Through her palette and materials, Jalal evokes the geography of Morocco's red earth valleys, sun-bleached plains, and vivid coastal towns.
Textile Art by Soumyia Jalal. Photos by Venice Documentation Project - Samuele Cherubini, Courtesy of the Pavilion of the Kingdom of Morocco.
Trained as an architect, Jalal brings a rigorous spatial sensibility to her textile art. Each piece is composed like a structure, with rhythm, repetition, and pause. But unlike static buildings, her textiles are alive with motion and mood. They shimmer between matte and sheen, density and transparency, solidity and breath. Woven surfaces read almost like landscapes or topographic maps - layered, textured, shifting.
Materiae Palimpsest. Photos by Venice Documentation Project - Samuele Cherubini, Courtesy of the Pavilion of the Kingdom of Morocco.
The works unfold as a sensory journey through the Moroccan Pavilion, inviting viewers to feel their way through the space. Installed alongside holograms of traditional artisans and tactile architectural models, Jalal’s pieces tether the conceptual to the tangible. They act as soft monuments to a disappearing knowledge system that prioritises natural materials, manual processes, and a respectful relationship with the land.
Crucially, her work is not nostalgic. It looks forward. By combining reclaimed and organic fibres with a contemporary design language, Jalal proposes a sustainable future rooted in ancestral wisdom. Her textiles become blueprints for how we might build - and live - differently: guided by texture, by touch, and by time-honoured techniques.
Textile Art by Soumyia Jalal. Photos by Venice Documentation Project - Samuele Cherubini, Courtesy of the Pavilion of the Kingdom of Morocco.
Practicing in Marrakech, Jalal is deeply connected to the cultural and ecological landscape she celebrates. Her art is as much about preservation as it is about reinvention. Within the framework of Materiae Palimpsest, curated by Khalil Morad El Ghilali and El Mehdi Belyasmine, her work becomes a quiet but powerful voice in a wider architectural dialogue - one that asks how we build sustainably, beautifully, and with care.
In a pavilion dedicated to the poetics of earth, Soumiya Jalal’s textiles are the connective thread stitching memory to matter, tradition to innovation, and Morocco’s rich material legacy to a shared global future.
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Further Information:
The 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia - is on now in Venice, Italy until 23 November 2025.
Soumiya Jalal
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Image Credits:
Lead Image: Portrait of Soumiya Jalal. Courtesy of vh.ma online.
All other images as credited in captions.