Mous Lamrabat — Celebrating the stars of our childhood bedroom walls
Celebrating the stars of our childhood bedroom walls
Before the days of Instagram or Pinterest, our bedroom walls and school planners were the blank canvases we used to show who we were. Logos, symbols and superheroes—from Tupac to Britney to the Power Rangers—were the language of belonging and identity. For their new WePresent-commissioned series “Moustalgia,” Mous Lamrabat and his partner and collaborator Lisa Lapauw traveled to Senegal and Qatar to celebrate these childhood fixations. They tell Alex Kahl how they created a love letter to the icons of youth, the spirit of play and the joy of turning memory into art.
“Tupac was everything back then,” says Mous Lamrabat, remembering his teenage years. In old family photos, you’ll see him flashing the West Side sign, posing proudly with his carefully curated collection of 90s CDs. He even once snuck that same hand sign into an official class photo, leading to a suspension from school when the teachers took a closer look. “I think most of the time, we were just obsessed with these symbols,” he says. “Symbols that, if you wore them, or if you had them somewhere, would represent something.”
For his partner and collaborator Lisa Lapauw, Britney was the muse. “You were so much cooler than me,” she tells Lamrabat, laughing. “All the things you say, I know them, but it was definitely not my group. When Britney came, I think I was 13 or something. I was like, ‘Whoa. What is this? I want to be her.’”
Symbols showed what group you belonged to. It was just a way to express what you were into.
They both mention the planners students used to be given at school, the one item you’d constantly carry with you throughout the year. “We used to do these collages, and it was always symbols that showed what group you belonged to,” says Lamrabat. “It was a way to express what you were into. These agendas were basically your personal moodboard.”
These symbols have always played a prominent role in Lamrabat’s work, from Nike swooshes to the McDonald’s arches to the names of basketball icons. “I feel like that actually never left me,” he says. “It’s basically a small obsession that I still have today.” Lapauw suggests that, perhaps, the use of symbols is a way for Lamrabat to keep them alive. “Because there’s so many things from my DNA when I was young that I forgot,” she says. “So, in a way, it’s trying to keep your past, these moments, alive.”
“Moustalgia,” Lamrabat and Lapauw’s latest project, commissioned by WePresent, is a celebration of these symbols, stars and superheroes we all worshipped on the walls of our childhood bedrooms. A 100 square foot version of the school agenda, the bare walls of our rooms were a blank canvas, where we could immortalize our idols. Think of Jess’ bedroom in “Bend It Like Beckham,” every wall dedicated to the United legend, his face pasted on every surface like a shrine to a deity. These icons would be the first thing we saw when we woke up and the last thing we saw before sleep.
“We all used to go to each other’s house to play. Your room was like your—” Lamrabat begins. “Showroom,” continues Lapauw, who recalls her teenage obsession with the band Hanson, leading her to totally cover her bedroom walls with cutouts of their faces. “It is super creepy actually,” she laughs, “to have all these faces of these boys in the room, and they’re looking down on you. I was actually dreaming about these guys, because whatever surrounds you, it becomes your reality.”
Lamrabat and Lapauw spent a month in Senegal, and then in Qatar, taking these nostalgic symbols out of their usual context—we see the Ninja Turtles on a street football pitch and Batman on a busy Dakar street. It’s a project built around connection, community and collaboration, from the models who were spotted by chance on the street to the local artists who got involved in the process. One shot that stands out features a boy dressed as the Wu-Tang Clan symbol and a group of kids in the foreground throwing up the Wu-Tang sign with their hands.
“I was trying to get my shot, and each time, there’s a couple more kids in the frame,” says Lamrabat, “and I was like, ‘You know what? Everybody get in front of the guy. Everybody sit down.” The commotion only increased as the team promised to hand out footballs after the shoot, the universal childhood language of wanting to have a kickabout with your mates. “These kids,” Lamrabat laughs, “all they want is balls.”
The shot of the Ninja Turtles was taken the same day, in that same village of Keur Mbenar, after the team drove just another few hundred meters down the road. The kids wear simple green shells on their backs and eye masks, but it’s immediately obvious which heroes they represent. “I normally begin by typing in one word online, like turtles, looking at everything to do with that word,” Lapauw says of her process of sourcing the costumes and props. “It’s always ping-pong. Mous gives me some concepts or ideas, or I’ll say some stuff. I never know what I’m looking for.”
Some of the items you’ll see have been in and out of suitcases and taken on shoots for years, but never quite found a home in an image. “We got the Power Rangers outfits,” says Lamrabat, “but we didn’t think about how we were going to shoot it, or how it was going to look. A lot of the photos we took were not planned.” We were just on the spot, like, “Yeah, can we try this?” It’s a process of trial and error. “That’s why we fail so much,” says Lapauw. “I think that’s the nicest way of working,” Lamrabat adds. “You need to stay flexible. If you had something in your head and it’s not working, you can lose a lot of time, so you need to be able to switch up.”
Lamrabat and Lapauw took the same on-the-spot approach when finding their models. “On the first evening, we were just standing at a night shop ordering some drinks, and our host said, ‘That guy on the motorcycle, he looks good. Should we ask him?’ That man was Rassoul, a 19-year-old local fisherman, who ended up in most of the shots. But it wasn’t just modeling—he helped behind the camera, too, fixing costumes and adjusting lighting. He just wanted to be there, and was a huge part of Lamrabat and Lapauw’s lives during the trip and beyond.
“We were going to leave soon, and he was going to stay there… he didn’t want to let that feeling go,” Lapauw says, talking about the experience of working to create something together. He and Lamrabat are still in touch, and there has since been an air of sadness for them around the fact that their time together had to come to an end. They created such a joyful series together with the community in Dakar, but it was such a fleeting moment, and for that, it’s all the more poignant. I ask them if the experience has changed them as people and as artists. “A hundred percent, it changes you,” says Lamrabat. “Everything that I cared about in the past also kind of changed me. That’s one of the reasons that I’m way too soft for the world we live in, but that’s also the reason why I create images like we created here. To run away from things. There’s always some sadness in the end, but thank God we have the photos as souvenirs.”
I just want to do stuff like this, because it brings me joy… I kind of forget everything.
It’s clear that Lamrabat and Lapauw feel such a warmth for these photos, as well as for the experience of creating them, and it’s a warmth that so many of us can relate to. These are simple symbols, but they’re potent. We yearn for them. They don’t just represent our childhoods, but a certain window of time in the world. When we’d wait hours for our favorite music video to appear by chance on MTV, when cartoons and play dates were everything. The joy of coming into school with your brand new Beyblade or Pokémon card or Tamagotchi, or pausing a song again and again for hours so you could write the lyrics down in full, for some inexplicable reason.
“The world is kind of a sad place for me,” says Lamrabat. “I just want to do stuff like this, because it brings me joy. When I’m with this group of people, I kind of forget everything.” “Moustalgia” is the ultimate answer to that sadness. It’s a series about joy: The joy we all felt as kids when we looked up from our beds at a poster of Batman or Britney or Blade; the joy Lamrabat and Lapauw felt bringing to life every creative idea that came to mind and each beautiful meeting with a stranger; the joy of a group of kids getting to play a superhero for a few minutes. It’s a series filled with smiles and stories and sweet moments, made sweeter still when you imagine there might be four Ninja Turtles still banging in goals on a pitch in a small village just outside Dakar.
