Amina Agueznay, Yasmina Alaoui, Badr El Hammami, Mohssin Harraki, Khadija Jayi and Fatiha Zemmouri – some of which will be presented in Italy for the very first time – are the talented and varied interpreters of this project.
Outstanding not only for their mature aesthetic research their names are already well known internationally: Amina Agueznay is currently among the artists at the prestigious Lyon Biennial; in 2018 Yasmina Alaoui received the “Award for Cultural Diversity” at the Dakar Biennial; Mohssin Harraki is among the protagonists of the Lagos Biennial 2021>2023 and he was included among the artists in the exhibition “Moroccan Trilogy” at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, as was Badr El Hammami; Khadija Jayi was exhibited at the MMVI, the Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain in Rabat in 2021, while Fatiha Zemmouri was recently exhibited at both the Thalie Fondation in Bruxelles and at l’Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris.
Far from being an attempt to define a general specificity, much less one which is geographic, this show does not circumscribe the aesthetic dimension of contemporary Moroccan art, but rather valourises differences in linguistic approach and stylistic grammar. Outside facile cultural rhetoric, it seeks to offer an opening to reflect on local artistic research, consolidating untried ways of interpreting and exalting multi-disciplinarity: as demonstrated by the several languages used by these artists. The curatorial choice of not impeding the versatility of these different expressions under a single theme, must thus be read as a choice to distance ourselves from erroneous ghettoizations or useless stereotypes.
The exhibition’s title BETWEEN NOW AND THEN, was adopted to show that the artists presented are, both particularly distinctive of the current artistic climate of the Maghreb, but who also represent its tomorrow. Their narration invites us to experience the numerous cultural and aesthetic universes that inhabit this polyhedric panorama, underlining the relationship between art and contemporary society, and concentrating on socio-cultural, identity and geopolitical issues, each of connate and necessary interest.
