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The YMA is a travelling group exhibition that represents young Moroccan artists working in different media and concepts that are inspired by their own unique environments. The exhibition commences at the Sulger-Buel Gallery in London in May 2019 with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in the United Kingdom and will then be transported to the KFW-DEG Bank in Cologne in June 2019 as part of their cultural program which had invited Morocco as the feature country this year.

The exhibition aims at fostering a young Moroccan contemporary art scene through a multidisciplinary exhibition of artists from the same generation. The goal of the exhibition is to showcase young creative talent and the artist's sensibilities as both African and global citizens.

Participating Artists include: ELIASSAA, Nafie Ben Krich, Nasrine Kheltent, Madiha Sebbani, Mohamed Saïd Chair, Rachid Ouhnni

Multiple Transmissions: Art in the Afropolitan Age 

Curated by Sandrine Colard

WIELS Contemporary Art Centre

25 May - 18 August 2019

Opening reception: 24 May 2019, 20:00 - 22:00

The exhibition Multiple Transmissions: Art in the Afropolitan Age, takes as its starting point the group of African artists who completed residences at WIELS between 2015 and 2019. Today an integral component of the art world landscape, residencies put artists in motion around the globe, while simultaneously immersing them in one place for a definite period of time. Artists, and African artists in particular, have become successive locals of multiple places and cities: they have become “Afropolitan” artists. Mainly developed by the thinker Achille Mbembe, the concept refers to the transnational cultures and aesthetic of 21st century African-identified urbanites. Both on and off the continent, these artists’ mental and physical itinerancies have made their mental geographies radically plural. Created between Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Johannesburg and Brussels, the residents’ productions are presented alongside a range of other art practices enmeshed in these global flows.

Participating Artists include: Nelson Makengo, Jean Katambayi, Georges Senga, Sinzo Aanza, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Emeka Ogboh, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Pélagie Gbaguidi.

Al Araby TV Network - Shubak Program

Al Araby TV Network Interviews curator Madiha Sebbani about 'YMA (Young Moroccan Artists)' Group Exhibition

Aired Live on Al Araby TV Network - 20 May 2019, 17:00 GMT

The YMA is a travelling group exhibition that represents young Moroccan artists working in different media and concepts that are inspired by their own unique environments. The exhibition commences at the Sulger-Buel Gallery in London in May 2019 with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in the United Kingdom and will then be transported to the KFW-DEG Bank in Cologne in June 2019 as part of their cultural program which had invited Morocco as the feature country this year.

The exhibition aims at fostering a young Moroccan contemporary art scene through a multidisciplinary exhibition of artists from the same generation. The goal of the exhibition is to showcase young creative talent and the artist's sensibilities as both African and global citizens.

Filam(a)nt
Fondation Blachere Art Centre
23 May - 05 October 2019
Opening reception: Thursday 23 May 2019, from 18:30

Core-yarn / core yarn: spun yarn with a core, usually yarn continuous filaments.

For this new summer exhibition, the Blachère Foundation proposes to explore arcana of the thread, the weaving, the link, the braiding. 

"Filam (a) nt" presents a selection of contemporary textile works by African artists, men and women, made in creative residences, kindly loaned by galleries or acquired for the Blachère Collection.

Each artist leaves fragments of their soul in their works, weaves a little of themselves into the canvas. The pieces presented are delicate, detailed, imposing, finely woven or roughly plaited, singular, with each other, telling the life that each artist breathes into each of his works.

From thread to soul to light, there is only one step. Real DNA of the Blachère company Illumination, it is the very soul. Thanks to the light wire, the creation of decorations knows no limits, except those of the imaginary, which it is pleasant to exceed non-stop.

Othello De'Souza-Hartley 'Diversifying the Portrait: Image and Identity' at Merton College Oxford

TS Eliot Theatre, Merton College Oxford

Friday 17 May 2019, 17:00-18:45

The portrait holds a particular place in our culture. The founding of the National Portrait Gallery in the middle of the 19th century aimed to establish 'a gallery of original portraits … consist[ing] as far as possible of those persons who are honourably commemorated in British history as warriors or as statesmen, or in arts, in literature or in science' (Lord Stanhope's statement to the House of Lords, 1856). In this context a portrait is a plaudit, awarded to the already distinguished; the artist who creates the likeness is of secondary importance to the subject. But just as our contemporary approach to the writing of history no longer confines itself to 'warriors and statesmen', so too our understanding of what a portrait can be, and the values it can serve, has altered.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972) established the notion of looking's relation to power, exploring how Western painting traditionally has in mind a male spectator whose 'colonizing gaze' joins the artist's as the axis of power within the work. Can this notion of 'ocular power' be subverted in portraiture by contemporary artists, in order to disrupt the status quo, depicting people and lives who may be absent from traditional histories? Indeed, does this established power dynamic even survive in our current digitised networks and drive to image the self?

The Art Newspaper - REVIEW - VENICE BIENNALE 2019

Venice Biennale 2019: the must-see pavilions around the city

By Julia Michalska, Hannah McGivern, Ben Luke, Eddy Frankel and Tim Cornwell POSTED 10 May 2019, 17:49 BST

An indoor beach, Mongolian throat singing and ceramic vaginas-where to go beyond the Arsenale and Giardini

Zimbabwe Pavilion
Soko Risina Musoro, Neville Starling, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Georgina Maxim, Cosmos Shiridzinomwa

Venue: Istituto Provinciale per l'Infanzia, Santa Maria Della Pieta

The theme of the Zimbabwean Pavilion is the corrosion of family life as economic and political pressures force a growing number of people to live estranged lives abroad. Dominating the space are show-stopping paintings by UK-based Kudzanai-Violet Hwami. At 26, Hwami is one of the youngest artists in the Biennale but is already a rising star (she will have her first institutional show at London's Gasworks this autumn). Her work reflects the challenges of diasporic life and the loneliness that accompanies the separation from the native land. Another artist, Georgina Maxim uses handed-down items of clothing to pay tribute to the role that relatives can play in the fortunes of an individual.

Historical Perspectives: collecting and displaying Afro-Atlantic Art

Goethe-Institut Salvador-Bahia

13 May 2019 at 18:00

The cycle of debates "flows - holdings of the South Atlantic", initiative of the Intervalo-Fórum de Arte, is an extension project created by the postgraduate program in visual arts of the Federal University of Bahia, held with the support of the Goethe-Institut Salvador-Bahia. The goal is to stimulate a reflection on transits of objects, Constitution of specific collections, speeches and canons.Join the Gallerist and curator Thais Darzé, historian Juliana Bevilacqua and the artist and curator Georgina Maxim, from Zimbabwe, one of the current residents at the artist residence program Vila Sul.

The meeting is open to the public and admission is free.

Middle East Monitor - Africa, Article, Europe & Russia, Morocco, Opinion

While Europe looks at Moroccan art, Moroccan art looks at Africa

By Naima Morelli POSTED 07 May 2019 at 4:50pm

Art institutions all around the world are paying increasing attention to emerging Moroccan artists.

Today more than ever Morocco is at the centre of political and economic interests. It's not surprising, then, that art institutions all around the world are paying increasing attention to emerging Moroccan artists. These contemporary practitioners are indeed moving in the footstep of a boundless cultural tradition, while also incorporating the fears, hopes and desires for the future of the whole country.

European galleries in particular are not missing the opportunity to let these artists take over their spaces. Enter the Young Moroccan Artists, a group of young talents identified recently by London's Sulger-Buel Gallery through their new exhibition. The show aims to foster a young, contemporary Moroccan art scene displaying the work of artists from the same generation. Working in different media and concepts, their practices are closely tied to their environment, which is at one both peculiarly African and global. A demonstration of Europe's interest in Morocco is that while the exhibition starts in London this month, it will then be transported to the KFW-DEG Bank in Cologne in June as part of its cultural programme, which has Morocco as the featured country this year.

In her first solo gallery exhibition in London, acclaimed Moroccan artist, Ghizlane Sahli utilises her remarkable understanding of space and form to present a series of three-dimensional bas-reliefs, as well as drawings and sculpture, in an exhibition in which she invites us on an inner and organic journey, bound by a universal theme, and allows us to transcend what would normally exclude humans from seeing "Universatility", and its sophisticated and complex mechanism. Sahli does not claim or condemn anything, for her, 'belonging' is a fragmented prison, and identity, a notion far too complex to confine or freeze without risking alienation. To this, she consciously substitutes the exploration of what is most fundamental and common to humanity, in its primitive origin, cleansed of all the stigmas that make it a distinction or belonging, whether cultural social, religious, geographical, racial or gender.

S/HE SPOKE ‘I AND I’ FOR WE: ON THE POIESIS OF COLLECTIVE MENTAL HEALING

SAVVY Contemporary in collaboration with the Psychiatric Community of the Fondazione Emilia Bosis

Isola Di San Servolo, 30174 Venice

10 May 2019, 11:00-18:00

CHAPTER 1: SYMPOSIUM IN VENICE

The Association of Neuroesthetics (AoN) is presenting its 7th Venice Symposium on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale of Art. This year’s AoN symposium coincides with the first chapter of the year-long project Ultrasanity. On Madness, Sanitation, Antipsychiatry and Resistance by SAVVY Contemporary: a research, performance and exhibition project in multiple chapters in collaboration with the AoN, ifa Gallery in Berlin, the Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira, and the 6th Biennale de Lubumbashi. The event brings together cognitive scientists, clinicians, social scientists, artists, patients and neuroscientists to challenge hegemonic knowledges and healing practices in biomedical psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and to cogitate together about alternative approaches, countertechniques and their significance in and as science themselves. Hegemonic therapeutics is primarily based in a Western ethnocentrism that disregards the healing possibilities of collective, mythic and historical narratives. With this programme we endeavour to engage both discourse and praxis, disputing ideas of normality, expanding nosologies and questioning dimensions of a therapeutics grounded in scientific objectivity and ethics ignoring phenomenological and social dimensions, power agendas and collective meaning.