Latest Posts

4th International Biennial of Casablanca full list of artists

Published by

The 4th International Biennial of Casablanca 2018 announces full list of artists

Fondation Maroc Premium and the International Biennial of Casablanca are pleased to confirm the full list of artists participating in the biennial’s 4th edition that will take place from 27 October to 2 December 2018.

The artists are: Ibrahim Ahmed (Kuweit/Egypt), Yoriyas Yassine Alaoui (Morocco), Héla Ammar (Tunisia), Gilles Aubry (Switzerland/Germany), Bianca Baldi (South Africa/Belgium), Raphaël Barontini (France), Shiraz Bayjoo (Mauritius/United Kingdom), Cristiano Berti (Italy), Sutapa Biswas (United Kingdom), Rémy Bosquère (France), Abdessamad El Montassir (Morocco/France) Raphaël Faon & Andres Salgado (France/Colombia), Thierry Geoffroy (France/Denmark), M’hammed Kilito (Morocco), Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (France/Morocco), Mohammed Laouli & Katrin Ströbel (Morocco/Germany), Mehryl Levisse (France), Fatima Mazmouz (Morocco/France), Emo de Medeiros (Benin/France), MELD & Alexander Schellow (United States/Germany), Gideon Mendel (South Africa/United Kingdom), Amine Oulmakki (Morocco), Anna Raimondo (Italy/Belgium), Saïd Raïs (Morocco), Ben Saint-Maxent (France), Magda Stawarska-Beavan & Joshua Horsley (Poland/United Kingdom), Oussama Tabti (Algeria/France), Filip Van Dingenen (Belgium), as well as Mo Baala (Morocco) and Haythem Zakaria (Tunisia/France) presented in collaboration with Limiditi – Temporary Art Projects.

Entitled Tales from Water Margins, the biennial proposes to explore narratives stemming from insular contexts and the relationship to tributaries, seas and oceans from a historical and contemporary perspective that includes experiences of displacement, journey, cultural migration and hybridity. This theme – inspired by Ifitry, the biennial’s residency set on the Moroccan coast in the region of Essaouira and facing the Atlantic Ocean – is anchored within the country’s own territorial features at the crossroad of land, ocean and sea. It also resonates with a number of contemporary issues to which the artists are responding through a diversity of creative forms.

Led by artistic director Christine Eyene, the 2018 edition will range from exhibitions of existing and newly commissioned art works, to more extended research-based projects with artists Delaine Le Bas (United Kingdom), Yvon Ngassam (Cameroon), Yohann Queland de Saint-Pern (France-Reunion Island) and Youssef Tabti (France/Germany).

In addition to the listed artists will be two exhibitions individually curated by Yasmina Naji, founder of Kulte Gallery and Editions (Rabat), and a project by Ema Tavola with artists Margaret Aull (Fiji/New Zealand), Leilani Kake (Cook Islands/New Zealand), Julia Mage’au Gray (Australia/New Zealand/Papua New Guinea), Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai (New Zealand/Tonga) and Vaimaila Urale (New Zealand/Samoa). Ema Tavola’s exhibition is generously supported by Creative New Zealand.

A collaboration is also being developed with Centre culturel Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen, a cultural centre dedicated to providing young people from Sidi Moumen area with opportunities to develop their creativity through training in performing arts and more.

The 4th International Biennial of Casablanca will take place from 27 October to 2 December 2018. The venues include Villa des Arts Casablanca, La Coupole, École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca, Instituto Cervantes, San Buenaventura Church, and more to be confirmed, including a number of interventions in the public space.

For the first time the biennial will be accompanied with a bilingual (French-English) catalogue.

The press conference and preview will take place on Friday 26 October 2018. The professional days will run from 26 to 29 October 2018 with performances, artists’ talks and round tables hosted in collaboration with École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca, Musée Abderrahman Slaoui and Institut Français de Casablanca.

The 4th International Biennial of Casablanca is organised by Fondation Maroc Premium and supported by Résidence Ifitry, Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Essaouira, Making Histories Visible / University of Central Lancashire, Creative New Zealand, Institut Français de Casablanca, Instituto Cervantes and Fondation ONA.

Media partners: Diptyk, Art Africa, something we Africans got.

For further information visit http://www.biennalecasablanca.org or contact the biennial office at info@biennalecasablanca.ma.

For press images please contact Sylvie Tailliez or Michèle Desmottes at press@biennalecasablanca.ma.

Featured image: Héla Ammar, Bab B’har (La porte de la mer), 2017. Courtesy the artist.

In Between

Published by

Guzo Art Projects presents In Between, an exhibition bringing together works of Ephrem Solomon, Osborne Macharia and Dennis Mũragũri, three artists interrogating the boundaries between fact and fiction, the present and the future, the visible and the invisible, in order to reflect upon and present new realities.

Osborne Macharia’s photography draws on culture, fiction and narrative to tell afrofuturist narratives that depict transformation. In Magadi, former female circumcisers living in Lake Magadi, have abandoned their former practice and taken up fashion as an alternative livelihood and tool to equip a younger generation of women.

Dennis Muraguri’s woodcut prints chronicle matatus, the common mode of public transport in Nairobi. He documents their changing facades, viewing them as metaphorical symbols of the economic and socio-political status of society and as machines with a complex relationship with the governments’ attempts at regulation. The artwork on the matatus reflects (personal and collective) preoccupations and future aspirations, political and ideological affiliations, current affairs and popular global culture.

In the Folk Memory series, Ephrem Solomon’s woodcuts highlight the importance of living in the present (and being expectant of the future). He utilizes archival newsprint to reflect on previous political ideologies, providing a potent background for portraits of unidentified individuals to be memorialized. The figures, dressed in black, appear to be in mourning the loss of loved ones and the inevitable passage of time. Made in Africa (2015) reflects on the fraught relationship between power and the people in the 1998-2000 civil war that severed relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The archival map featured on the work shows the countries before this took place, echoing the current political restoration taking place between the two countries.

In Between: Ephrem Solomon, Osborne Macharia and Dennis Mũragũri
11-16 September 2018

Guzo Art Projects
508 King’s Road Gallery
508 King’s Road
London SW10 0LD

For further information, please contact Wanja Kimani on info@guzoartprojects.com.

Featured image: Osborne Macharia. Magadi (1), 2017. Courtesy the artist and Guzo Art Projects.

Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito

Published by

Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix is pleased to announce a joint exhibition by Japanese artists Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito.

Curated by Hikotaro Kanehira, the exhibition will feature works recently created by Aoki and Ito in their Kyoto studios, as well as new pieces produced within the gallery space in August. The exhibition will bring together paintings, embroidery, small objects and video installations along with found objects from various London locations.

Aoki and Ito have been collaborating since 2000. Their work is informed by both traditional and contemporary Japanese culture. Geometric forms and vibrant colours are recurring themes in Aoki’s work. The artist is often inspired by the natural world, plants and animals as well as fragments of everyday life assembled in installations that are shaped by each of her exhibitions.

Ito uses a wide range of media taking the form of embroidered drawings, modelling pictures, or hand-made cord drawings. The artist’s choice of hard-to-manipulate media means he can never entirely be in control of his creative process, and the end result is not always what he would have expected originally. The rough, energetic lines flow from paper to fabric to screen with engaging sensitivity, infusing into his body of work a sense of serenity in which time appears to be suspended.

The two artists’ works fuse and produce synergy with depth and complexity. The exhibition will touch on the issues of psychological development and the character-building process of young children, making quiet references and paying homage to child psychology analysis based on essays by Kiyoshi Oka, a well-known Japanese mathematician.

Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito
7th September – 22nd November 2018

Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix
19 Goulston St
London E1 7TP
www.yamamotokeiko.com

Featured image: Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito, Ways of Worldmaking (2011). Installation view, National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Africa State of Mind

Published by

Africa State of Mind, curated by Ekow Eshun with New Art Exchange, explores the work of an emergent generation of photographers from across the African continent. 16 artists from 11 different countries interrogate ideas of ‘Africanness’ through highly subjective renderings of life and identity on the continent, along the way revealing Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory; a state of mind as much as a physical location. The exhibiting artists are: Emmanuelle Andrianjafy, Sammy Baloji, Raphaël Barontini, Neil Beloufa, Girma Berta, Eric Gyamfi, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Lebohang Kganye, Namsa Leuba, Michael MacGarry, Sabelo Mlangeni, Mimi Cherono Ng’ok, Musa N Nxumalo, Ruth Ossai, Athi Patra Ruga and Michael Tsegaye.

The exhibition orientates around three main themes – Inner Landscapes, Zones of Freedom and Hybrid Cities. In the show the modern African city is documented in all its dynamism and contradiction. The fluidity of gender and sexual identity is addressed through compelling portraiture, and the legacy of history, from slavery and colonialism to apartheid, becomes the source of resonant new myths and dreamscapes.

Africa State of Mind takes place at a time in which popular Western views of the continent still remain limited. Exhibition curator, Ekow Eshun explains: ‘On one hand, there is the boosterism of an “Africa rising” narrative, that celebrates the development of an emergent middle class and the growth of a tech sector driven by a young aspirational population, while glossing over the inequalities of income and opportunity that still hinders social progress in many countries. On the other hand, the reductive stereotype of Africa as a land of would-be migrants and corrupt rulers – a vision given ugly validation by President Trump’s description of its nations as “shithole countries”.’ By contrast, Africa State of Mind features photography that seeks to address the complexity of what it means, and how it feels, to live in Africa today.

The exhibition also draws inspiration from the work of the Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr, who has called for a fresh consideration of how to understand Africa. Sarr speculates about a new Africa conjured into being by artists, thinkers and cultural actors. By creative figures whose work is intent on articulating contemporary lived experience in Africa as a thing of nuance and imaginative reach. In so doing articulating Africa as a place where there is, as Sarr puts it, a profound ‘continuity between the real and the possible’.

Featured image): Kiluanji Kia Henda. The Last Journey of the Dictator Mussunda N’zombo Before the Great Extinction: Act I (detail), 2017.