The Casablanca Art School, Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde

Episode 173

The Casablanca Art School, Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde

This podcast about the Casablanca Art School’s development in the postcolonial era of 1960-1970s, Morocco, was recorded during the time of the exhibition at Tate St-Ives, 27 May 2023-14 January 2024. It brings together for the first time a selection of 21 artists-activists who significantly participated in the various artistic manifestations and platforms, catalyzed by the Casablanca Art School (M. Melehi, F. Belkahia, M. Chabâa, M. Hamidi, M. Ataallah, M. Agueznay, M. Labied, H. Miloudi, F. Bellamine, Chaïbia...). Their multifaceted geometric abstraction itself working as a platform drawing a much bigger territory of action: critical journals and magazines, interior and graphic design, collecting and studying Afro-Berber popular arts, mural painting, street exhibitions… Eventually the CAS proves to be not only one of the most important postcolonial art schools of the Global South but also a social interface, for rethinking public space (through the arts) in Morocco. The exhibition referred to is curated by Morad Montazami and Madeleine de Colnet for Zamân Books & Curating. 

Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as curator « Middle East and North Africa », he developed the publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating. to explore Arab, African and Asian modernities. He published numerous essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif Al-Ani, Faouzi Laatiris, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar, Behjat Sadr, etc. and curated among other projects Bagdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, The Mosaic Rooms, London/MACCAL, Marrakech/Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, 2019-2020 ; Douglas Abdell : Reconstructed Traphouse, Cromwell Space, Londres, 2021 ; Monaco-Alexandria. The Great Detour. World-Capitals and Cosmopolitan Surrealism, Nouveau Musée National, Monaco, 2021-2022.    

This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 19th of June, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

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We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón, AIMS contemporary art follow for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast. 

Posted by Hayet Lansari, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).

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Suggested Bibliography

Montazami, M. La galerie L’Atelier : le musée sans murs du modernisme transméditerranéen, in revue Perspective, n°2, 2017 : https://journals.openedition.org/perspective/7748

 

O'Neill, P. et al. (2019) Curating after the global : roadmaps for the present, Luma Foundation/Bard College,

Montazami, M. Ornements transfrontières/avant-gardes marocaines : entre ésotérisme
et post-colonialisme, revue Études asiatiques, n°70, 2016 : https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/151519/1/asia-2016-0048.pdf

Mohamed Melehi in conversation with Morad Montazami, in Third Text, 2019: http://thirdtext.org/melehi-montazami 

Flint, B. (2021). Afro-Berber Planet.The Trans-Saharan arts at the Tiskiwin Museum, from Marrakech to Timbuktu, Zamân Books. 

Sefrioui, K. (2013). La revue Souffles 1966-1973. Espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc, Casablanca, Sirocco.

Bauhaus Imaginista. (2019). A School in the World, Thames & Hudson, 

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Slides

Slide 1: Toni Maraini teaching African art history at the Casablanca Art School, 1964-1965. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.  

Slide 2: Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa and Mohamed Melehi surrounded by the students and their guest Augusto Bonalumi at the Casablanca Art School, 1966. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 3: Mohammed Chabâa graphic design studio at the Casablanca Art School, 1968. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Chabâa archives/estate.    

Slide 4:Mohammed Chabâa graphic design studio at the Casablanca Art School, 1966. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 5: View of the Student Annual Exhibition of The Casablanca Art School, Fine Arts Gallery of the Arab League Park, June 1968. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Chabâa archives/estate. 

Slide 6: View of the Student Annual Exhibition of The Casablanca Art School, Fine Arts Gallery of the Arab League Park, June 1968. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 7: View of Plastic Presence manifesto-exhibition, 16 November square, Casablanca, June 1969. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 8: View of Plastic Presence manifesto-exhibition, Jemaa el-Fna square, Marrakech, May 1969. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 9: View of Plastic Presence manifesto-exhibition, Jemaa el-Fna square, Marrakech, May 1969. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 10: View of the Moroccan artists on display at the Baghdad Biennial, 1974. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 11: View of Asilah Cultural Festival, mural by Mohammed Chabâa, 1978, Asilah. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

Slide 12: View of Asilah Cultural Festival, mural by Miloud Labied, 1978, Asilah. Photo M. Melehi ©M. Melehi archives/estate.   

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