Rachid Boukharta

Le jardin des proies 4 and Le jardin des proies 2 (2022)

Close Looking: Queer African Art and intimacy

Visual description:

Le jardin des proies presents two colored pencil and ink drawings of nude men surrounded by flowers. Each figure appears alone, but the works speak to one another through posture, mood, and setting.

In the first drawing, a light-skinned man with short black hair and a full beard tilts his face downward, his lips slightly pursed. He stands naked among tall flowers against a deep purple background. Hot pink, red, and pale yellow blossoms surround his head and body, while dense green stems rise across his chest.

In the second drawing, another light-skinned man, slightly darker in complexion, also stands nude among flowers. He has thick black hair with bangs across his forehead and a similarly full beard. Positioned slightly off-center, he looks down toward his shoulder, his mouth slightly open. He is surrounded by red, pink, and coral-colored flowers linked by small green leaves.

Both drawings are intimate and quiet. Their figures are not dramatic or theatrical. Instead, they seem absorbed in inward feeling, suspended in a dense floral world that feels both protective and charged.

Context:

Rachid Boukharta is a French artist of Algerian and Moroccan descent whose work is shaped by questions of male homosexual desire, cultural memory, and place. His drawings often draw on Moroccan history, landscape, and visual tradition.

In Morocco, homosexuality remains criminalized, and same-sex desire is often treated as socially dangerous or morally suspect. Against that background, Boukharta’s work becomes quietly subversive. These men move through a garden filled with flowers associated with Moroccan landscape and culture, especially the Damask rose, placing queer desire within a setting that is both local and natural.

It is also useful to remember that in many Islamic traditions, gardens can function as earthly images of paradise. In Morocco, gardens may also offer forms of privacy and seclusion not always available in public social space. That gives the setting additional weight.

Interpretation:

These drawings suggest intimacy without making it explicit. The men may be lovers, strangers, or figures connected through atmosphere rather than direct narrative. That uncertainty is part of the work’s force.

By placing these men within a garden of native flowers, Boukharta challenges the idea that homosexuality is unnatural or foreign. The drawings suggest instead that queer desire belongs within the landscape, and within cultural memory, rather than outside it.

Their nudity adds another layer. It may suggest vulnerability, honesty, or openness, but it also resists shame. The figures are exposed without being sensationalized. Their stillness and softness emphasize intimacy as something quiet and embodied rather than dramatic.

The deep purple background may evoke evening or secrecy, but it also heightens the lushness of the flowers and the warmth of the bodies. The garden becomes a space where tenderness can exist outside scrutiny, and where desire can be imagined as part of nature rather than in conflict with it.

Reflect and Explore

• Are the two men depicted as lovers, strangers, or something more ambiguous? How does that uncertainty shape your reading of the works?

• Could the dark backdrop suggest night, secrecy, or marginalization? What does it add to the mood?

• What is the significance of their nudity? Does it suggest vulnerability, honesty, or intention?

• Why might Boukharta place these figures in a garden? How does that setting reinforce ideas of nature, growth, intimacy, and freedom from scrutiny?

  
  

Learn More

Artist & Primary Sources

• Rachid Boukharta — Artist website

  
  

Further Resources

• National Museum of African Art — Garden of Delights / Le jardin des proies

  
  

Contextual Reading

• Human Rights Watch — “Morocco: Homosexuality Convictions Upheld”

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Rachid Boukharta Le jardin des proies queer African art