The Marrakech Biennale, the first major art biennale held in the Maghreb focusing on a balanced selection of contemporary art, music, literature, and film, will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year.
To be held from February 26th to March 31st under the artistic direction of Alya Sebti, the so-called Biennale 5 will spread its art works between three historical buildings in Marrakech, including the 16th century Palais Badii, the Dar Si Said, which houses the Museum of Moroccan Arts, and the former Bank Al Maghrib, located at the UNESCO-protected Jemaa El Fna square in the Medina.
For this occasion, Sebti has invited the reputed Dutch-Moroccan curator Hicham Khalidi (the former artistic director of TAG, Institute for Audiovisual Art in the Netherlands), who will curate the Visual Arts and Sound program of this year’s edition. Khalidi will feature 43 artists from the Maghreb, Middle East, and beyond, and display 20 specially commissioned pieces.
Using the main theme of the Biennale as a guiding thread—Where are we now?—Khalidi will examine the current socio-political context of the region through contemporary art in order to demonstrate how fictionalized identity can be used to produce a national one.
“The Biennale theme, Where are we now?, is trying to deal with the past and trying to find its own tradition,” explained the curator in an interview with Culture24. “[It shows us] how to deal with this friction between the different ideas of the West and the Middle East, between Islam or Christianity: all these tensions in between.”
In addition to Khalidi’s major Visual Arts and Sound program, three more programs and several gallery exhibitions will take place throughout the historical center of the city, including a Cinema & Video program curated by Jamal Abdennassar, a Literature section curated by Driss Ksikes, and several Performing Arts events curated by Khalid Tamer.
Moreover, internationally reputed artists and celebrities will highlight the Biennale with special projects or talks, including British actor Rupert Everett, who will hold a panel discussion with screenwriter Anthony Horowitz on February 27th, and Hassan Hajjaj, who has been commissioned to re-design the Biennale’s Café, which is set in an old Art Deco building in the city center. The full list of the participating artists, galleries and institutions is available here.
Pictures© 2013 Marrakech Biennale
—Elisabeta Tudor
