MARRAKECH, Morroco — Located in Marrakech’s luxury hotel district, the Palace Es Saadi is a walled and guarded complex with lush grounds and elaborately tiled fountains. It’s also one of the two venues housing the Marrakech Art Fair, where this year organizers called for submissions of work with a “protest aesthetic” – not surprising considering the post-Arab Spring political landscape.
The district, a little island of everywhere afloat in a thousand-year-old city, ends a few blocks away. A French-built branch of the Bank of Morocco (now a venue for cultural events) sits on Jamaa el Fna square – a plaza so bustling that it is easy to walk by a snake charmer without knowing it. This defunct bank houses the showcase exhibition of this year’s Fair –Images Affranchies, or Liberated Images.
The question of whether there is an emerging artistic movement in the Arab world, or whether the elite of the diaspora have simply become better at competing on the international exhibition circuit was a central concern of the various round-table discussions held alongside the galleries in the Es Saadi complex.
The resumes of most of the artists present are filled with formal studies in Strasbourg, long years exhibiting in Paris, partnerships with galleries in Mexico, Japan, and New York. The exhibitors are multilingual, camera-ready, and have assistants and complicated business cards – the qualities one would expect from any successful contemporary artist.
At the art fair’s opening soiree, women wearing gowns with plunging backs stride alongside leonine Sir Richard Branson look-alikes in linen suits. They stream between the fountains, foyer and courtyard, past a portrait of King Mohammed VI. A woman carrying a designer dog looks uncertain the dog is allowed. Caterers cut nova lox and place the pieces on trays in rolls, alongside flaky pastries, succulent beef and champagne.
The Images Affranchies exhibition – curated by former director of the Arab World Institute, Brahim Alaoui – collects work completed by Arab artists between the years 2006-2010. The demonstrations and revolts in the Arab world have given a new context and relevance to the collection, but one has apprehensions that a visual art exhibition featuring work done in a “protest aesthetic,” funded in part by the government of France, will have pat politics and punch-pulling products.
Will the high-concept frame be emotionally resonant, or will the work appear too made-to-order, an effort by slick expats with MFAs to profit from the turmoil in their home countries?
On the roof of the old bank, a man talks on his cell phone and smokes a cigarette while looking out over Jamaa el Fna in late afternoon. The three minarets surrounding the square will soon sound the call to prayer. In front of the gallery, a diapered Barbary ape on a leash drinks from a dog dish, spitting distance from a Club Med.
Issue art of the kind on offer straddles the worlds of art and politics – two realms where a lot of hay is made by potshot criticism, but the video piece “Le souffle du récitant comme signe” (The Breath of the Narrative as a Sign) by Yazid Oulab is abstract in a way that resists easy analysis or connection to politics. Four thin lines of smoke streaming upwards with slight undulations. The audio contains repetitive chanting with the occasional chime of a bell and, sealed in the dark rooftop room, the effect is hypnotic.
Another video artist, Adel Abidini, is from Iraq but currently living in Finland. He’s energetic and nervy – uncomfortable in front of an audience. He apologizes for not being much of a talker, and tries to convey his feelings about exhibiting in the Iraq pavilion at this year’s Biennale in Venice, rather than that of his adopted Finland.
“I thought it was a joke,” Abidini said of the initial invitations, which he ignored.
Abidini has not returned to Iraq in several years, but to him, responding to events seen at a distance, documented by others, does not present any unusual artistic challenge.
“All artistic product starts with a concept you have inside yourself,” he says. He runs a hand through his short salt and pepper hair, and extends an arm from tense, rounded shoulders to drop his cigarette into a nearby cup of coffee. He attempts a metaphor about helping a woman pick out clothes. The gist is that art has to be personal.
