More than 200 works by contemporary artists from the last seven decades in Morocco, making up the “Moroccan trilogy 1950-2020”, went to a historical exhibition which opened this Wednesday at the prestigious Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid. A series of conferences and workshops will accompany this exhibition – the first, of the National Museum in 2021 – which will be held until the beginning of autumn.
Moroccan artists have finally, we would be tempted to say, a leading space in a large Spanish museum, far from this European cliché and tourist folklore. Artists who do not forget where they come from and who do not want to make folklore but art. Today, there is in Morocco in addition to a group of millennial artists who produce visual arts of value, others, with a contemporary and revolutionary cachet, and who generally cost less to access exhibition spaces. (and festivals) abroad than in their own country unfortunately. Never mind !
The “Moroccan trilogy 1950-2020” is devoted to the art of the Kingdom of Morocco over the past seventy years. Organized by Manuel Borja-Villel and Abdellah Karroum, the exhibition – which opened to the public on March 31 – covers 250 works from three periods in Morocco: that of the postcolonial transition (1950-1969), that of the ” years of lead “ (1970) -1999) and that commonly called ” generation 00 “ (2000-2020). The exhibition of the Moroccan trilogy, of the Reina Sofa Art Museum, is organized in collaboration with the Foundation of the National Museum of Morocco and will remain open to the public until September 27.
National eminences through their artistic works (poetry, cinema, painting, sculpture and other works of art …) will be represented, De Chaïbia Talal, Mohamed Afifi, Malika Agueznay via Randa Maaroufi, Younes Rahmoun, Mustapha Akrim, Sara Ouhaddou , Karim Rafi, Mohamed Larbi Rahhali and many others, all will contribute through this artistic event to strengthen the cultural and historical links between the two neighbors and to revive through this exhibition the common cultural past of Andalusia.
We will retain from this event, whose expectations go beyond the sole cultural domain with regard to “the cold situation currently between the two countries” these snippets of sentences from the creators Safaa Erruas, Karim Rafi as well as the curator, Abdellah Karroum (current director of the museum of Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar). They addressed each to their own style, the reasons behind historic partitions, the fit between the artist and the museum institution in the society of his time, as well as aspects linked to the personal creative process of each of them. Abdellah Kerroum spoke of the citizen artist, integrated into the future of his time and with particular responsibilities, Karim Rafi explained another angle, which goes beyond that of the social or the spectacle sometimes supported and contemplated by an artist who is “ ramifies ”in reality. “Coming out of the colonial era, our parents wanted to build a new Morocco “.
While Safaa Erruas will say from the top of the period of the last twenty years “The artwork conveys the same reality in any space, whether small or large. It gives a feeling of risk and at the same time gives curiosity and the desire to get closer “.