In the Footsteps of Odette du Puigaudeau at the YSL Museum

From 3 October 2026 to 7 March 2027, the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech presents "Sur les traces d'Odette du Puigaudeau" (In the Footsteps of Odette du Puigaudeau), an exhibition devoted to the draughtswoman, journalist, explorer and ethnologist, born in Saint-Nazaire in 1894 and died in Rabat in 1991.

In 1933 she left France with Marion Sénones for Mauritania, the first of many expeditions across the Sahara. She settled in Rabat in 1961, worked for Moroccan radio and, from 1970 to 1977, ran the prehistory office of the Museum of Antiquities in Rabat. She wrote eight books and an ethnological treatise on the Moorish people.

More than 200 works and documents, from photographs, drawings and manuscripts to objects, sound archives and documentary film extracts, follow her life in three sequences: from Saint-Nazaire to Paris (1894 to 1934), her desert journeys (1934 to 1961) and her life in Rabat until 1991. Nomadic cultures, everyday objects, hairstyles, jewellery, dwellings and the skills of the desert run through the exhibition, and southern Morocco holds an important place, with Tiznit, the Tamanart valley and Foum El Hassan, where she recorded many rock engravings.

The pieces come mainly from the Musée Pierre Bergé des arts berbères, the Fondation Jardin Majorelle and private collections. The exhibition is curated by Hayate Machache and Monique Vérité, her biographer, with scenography by the architect Jasmin Oezcebi.