(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Doha: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in a collaboration with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation has launched Moroccan Trilogy: 1950-2020, a sweeping survey of the culture of Morocco from the 1950s to the present day.
The show, which runs until September 27, features more than 250 works by 60 artists, including a series of important works from the collection of Mathaf, as well as archival material drawn from private and public collections. The exhibition also premieres or re-activates a number of works, and includes several new commissions.
The exhibition is co-curated by Manuel Borja-Villel, Director of the Reina Sofia Museum, and Abdellah Karroum, Director of Mathaf.
Divided into three chapters, historical timeframes defined by major societal shifts, the exhibition examines the interdisciplinary domains of art, literature, film, architecture, theatre, and music and their personal and professional networks. Each chapter of the trilogy is intended to provide a non-exhaustive historical reading of these diverse, interconnected forms of expression, both intellectual and artistic, the generations of artists, and their relationship to socio-political struggles for freedom.
The first chapter covers the period 1950-1969, during the struggle for independence and following forty years of French and Spanish colonial rule, presenting historical works that defined new tendencies of anti-colonial art practices in the 1960s, including a radical revision of the Fine Art Schools with a futurist perspective.
The second period, from 1970-1999, encompasses the so-called Years of Lead, and is among the most violent in Morocco's recent history, including the uprisings of 1981 and 1984 as a consequence of the political and economic crisis. This chapter introduces some of the most experimental works that remained for decades, as many artists and intellectuals worked in secret or adopted strategies of resistance to the market and the established podiums, while the state initiated art festivals in major cities.
The third period from 2000-2020, focuses on the work of artists and activists, marking the rise of populist political parties, the Casablanca terrorist attacks in 2003 and the Arab Spring, defining an era of radical change, mass uprising and technological development. The generation of artists, who emerged during this period broke away from their predecessors. The Generation 00 artists look at social realities with immediate and live updates about the world, work with new media practices, and operate in a post-internet world.
The exhibition also includes works by artists who worked as outsiders and developed unique and poetic vocabularies.
'This historical exhibition is part of a larger ongoing research programme that is constantly expanding. This first presentation in a museum context seeks to amplify the artists' perspective of a turbulent period in the history of Morocco, and has been developed in close collaboration with the Reina Sofia Museum over the last three years. Divided into three historical timeframes defined by major social shifts, each chapter of the trilogy is intended to provide a new framework for reading art histories in Morocco and their relationship to socio-political struggles for freedom, said Karroum.
An important new book will be published to coincide with the exhibition with contributions by key figures associated with the period, as well as an extensive public programme.
The exhibition has been organised within the framework of the programme for cultural cooperation between Spain and Morocco in the field of museums, an initiative fostered by the National Foundation of Museums of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Government of Spain, in collaboration with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation.
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