It’s mid-November now and the exhibit Memory || Place || Desire: Contemporary Art of the Maghreb and Maghrebi Diaspora has long been installed and viewed my many guests. Opening day, Friday, October 24 came with a gallery space overflowing with spectators.

The opening began as Koshland Director of the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities, Laura McGrane, introduced head curator, Professor Carol Solomon along with the student curators.

Next to speak was Professor Solomon, who explained the exhibition as one that aimed to illustrate the diverse types of art that come out of the Maghreb and that guests should leave the exhibit realizing that there is not one type of art coming from this region. After this introduction, Professor Solomon turned the guests to the student curators, who guided the crowd through the gallery and spoke for a few minutes about pieces that they studied in depth the previous year.

The exhibit opening has come and gone, but Memory || Place || Desire: Contemporary Art of the Maghreb and Maghrebi Diaspora will remain until December 14, 2014. Tours will run every Thursday at 4:00pm for the duration of the show.

KHAMSA: Amulets of North Africa

October 9–November 23, 2014

Alcove Gallery, Magill Library

Used for centuries as protective symbols, the khamsa is found in Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions in North Africa and the Middle East. The word means “five” in Arabic. Khamsas commonly appear as amulets in the shape of an open hand rendered in silver or other metals and are worn as jewelry or mounted on walls and doorways to bring luck and ward off evil. This exhibition features a private collection of over 30 nineteenth- and twentieth-century khamsas from Morocco.

Curated by students Emma Cohen, Micaela Houtkin, and Miriam Hwang-Carlos under the supervision of Professor Carol Solomon, KHAMSA: Amulets of North Africa will be on view in the Alcove Gallery in Magill Library from October 9 to November 23, 2014. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with Memory, Place, Desire: Contemporary Art of the Maghreb and Maghrebi Diaspora at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College from October 24 to December 15, 2014.

As a part of the Curatorial Praxis course last spring, Miriam Hwang-Carlos, Micaela Houtkin, and I worked on a small satellite exhibition on khamsas. Since Memory, Place, Desire deals with contemporary art of the Maghreb, it seemed appropriate to also address the more traditional symbol of the khamsa, which is associated with the region.

Starting with a collection of Moroccan khamsas, the three of us crafted an exhibit dealing with the presence and implication of this symbol from historical to contemporary times. We decided to address three main aspects of the symbol: historical and religious significance, symbolism and iconography, and artistic representations of the khamsa. Within each of these categories we did background research, chose representative images, and created all summarizing texts and labels. Additionally, we got to design the promotional postcards, determine the actual layout of the exhibit, and even help with installation. It was a wonderful opportunity to gain hands on experience in every stage of the making of an exhibit, from conception to research to design.

Students in Curatorial Praxis concluded class this week with the last of the student presentations about the artists to be represented in the show and a bit of cake, courtesy of Professor Solomon (featuring the work of Mohamed el Baz, one of our Artists in Residence).

While the semester has come to a close, work on the show will continue throughout the summer and right up until the show’s opening on October 24. Students turned in the final drafts of their catalog entries in class, but the catalog design process is ongoing. Professor Solomon will continue to figure out how exactly all the works will actually get to us—shipping art, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a complicated endeavor—and, of course, the exhibition itself will have to be installed, a feat that will require the hard work of Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery staff, volunteers (including some Curatorial Praxis alums who will be on campus next semester), and perhaps a few of the artists themselves.

Look for more updates as the exhibition’s opening approaches. Until then—

Several weeks ago, students in Professor Carol Solomon’s Curatorial Praxis class were assigned an artist whose work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Memory || Place || Desire.  The students have spent most of the month of April researching the artists and drafting text to accompany their pictured works in the exhibition’s catalogue.  By the end of the last class on Wednesday, each student will also have given a short presentation to the class outlining his/her artist’s background and style.

The presentations and drafting process provide extra insight into each artist’s inspirations and how they have been influenced by the Maghreb.  Nick Schoen, one of the students in Professor Solomon’s class, has been researching Mustapha Akrim, an artist that visited Haverford a few weeks ago through the Mellon Creative Residencies Program.  “Focusing on Mustapha has made me realize that he’s really not just an artist, and a lot of the other artists that will be featured in Memory || Place || Desire aren’t either,” says Nick.  “Mustapha is a visionary.  He is trying to change Morocco for the better through his art, and I have a much better appreciation for him and his goals after meeting and reading about him.”

In addition to the presentations and catalogue entries, the class has also been putting together short recordings on their artists to help create the exhibition’s audio tour.  Mike Ferrara, the student that is spearheading this project, thought it would be interesting to have the students talk casually about their artist for the recordings, rather than just read the text that will be featured in the catalogue.  The recordings are nearly completed.

The class as a whole has spent some time debating the layout, fonts, and cover of the exhibition’s catalogue in the past couple weeks.  A group of students has also been brainstorming the installation design of the exhibition itself in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery.

With the school year coming to a close, and the departure of the artists in residence, the students of Carol Solomon’s Curatorial Praxis class continue to progress in the making of the Memory || Place || Desire exhibit.

Recently, the class met with Matthew Seamus Callihan, Associate Director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and Campus Exhibitions, to discuss the setup of the gallery.  Now, a group of students from the class have been working on several possible layouts using Google SketchUp.  The application helps students to create an accurate model of the exhibit space, and allows them to rearrange the gallery’s moveable walls and even import scaled art works onto the walls. Using SketchUp, the students are able to present a lifelike version of what the gallery space will actually look like when all of the works are in it, and thus many issues involving space can be realized in this digital format before the final set up is devised.

While the class has been educating each other on each of the artists that have works in the exhibition, Professor Solomon has been working on a satellite exhibition: Khamsa: Amulets of North Africa.  The exhibit features several Khamsas—literally meaning five—or Hands of Fatima, which will be on display.  Khamsas are hand shaped amulets, typically used in jewelry or wall hangings as a sign of good luck and protection. These amulets have Jewish and Muslim origins, and the Khamsa is referred to the hand of Fatima in Islam (named after Mohamed’s daughter) and the hand of Mariam or Mary in Judaism and Christianity.  This exhibit will coincide with Memory ||Place || Desire and will be located in Magill Library’s Alcove Gallery.

Mustapha Akrim’s residency concluded on March 27, following a farewell dinner and an interview with students about his work earlier that day. He answered questions over the course of forty-five minutes, speaking on a range of topics. Perhaps the most pressing question was the significance of his materials, especially the concrete in which Article 13, his most famous work, and Article 25, a version of which he created during his residency at Haverford, are cast. He attributed his materials to his time spent working construction with his father, a builder: “When I was in the building [industry] with my father, in the building you can find all the materials, concrete, the wood… everything… a lot of time I use the concrete, the idea became the petrification of this article. It’s very hard, it’s not accessible. It does not exist in the society, just on the paper.”

He refers here to Article 25 of the Moroccan constitution, which lends its title to the piece—a literal rendering of the text of this section of the constitution in concrete. Article 25 “talks about the freedom of expression and opinion,”  says Akrim, but “for me, when I read this part of the article that talks about the freedom of expression and opinion, when I look at my society, it’s very far [from that]; it’s not possible. I watch the TV or see in the newspaper, somebody goes to prison because he talked about the king or about government or about some person, official person, where is this freedom, where is this opinion, where is this expression?”

Akrim is among Morocco’s most prominent and political artists today, and we were privileged to host him for the time we did. Look for his Article 25, alongside the works of many other distinguished artists, in the show next fall.

Memory || Place || Desire: Contemporary Art of the Maghreb and the Maghrebi Diaspora, the exhibition opening at Haverford in October 2014, is beginning to take shape.

Last week, students in Professor Carol Solomon’s Curatorial Praxis class met with Catalogue Designer Anthony Smyrski to start hashing out the details of the exhibition’s catalogue, discussing everything from the type of paper that will be used to the spatial orientation of what will be printed on each page.  This week, students in the class visited the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery to get to know the space that will be the future home of Memory || Place || Desire.  Matthew Seamus Callihan, Associate Director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and Campus Exhibitions, spoke to the students about all of the fine details that must be considered in the curating process.  One such detail is the gallery’s six movable walls, which can be assorted in any number of ways to customize the space for each showing.  There will also be several video works as a part of this exhibition, so making sure they do not overwhelm viewers will be another challenge.

The list of works that will be included in the fall exhibition is nearly finalized, and it includes two from Mustapha Akrim and three from Mohamed El Baz.  Both of these Moroccan artists visited Haverford in March (as a part of the Mellon Creative Residencies Program) to create works specifically for the upcoming exhibition.  There will also be works in the show by Driss Ouadahi, Kader Attia, eL Seed, and Mounir Fatmi, among others.

Moroccan artist in residence, Mustapha Akrim, has extended his participation in the Haverford College community to working with some of the school’s art classes.  In a workshop led by Akrim alongside Professors John Muse and Erin Schoneveld, Akrim showed various students from the Tri-Co how to construct art with concrete.

Students were assigned to choose any word, in any style, to that they would make a mold of and create out of concrete. In order to explain how students arrived at their respective word choices, Professor Muse recalled that the class discussed “words, concrete, and typography” together and how each principle could relate to each other.  Like with Mustapha’s Article 13 and Article 25, the students considered how their words would be interpreted once molded into concrete.  One group of students played with the use of concrete as a very permanent material and the impermanence of promises, especially those made over text message, by creating the word “Yes” surrounded by a speech bubble.  Other students focused less on the metaphorical meaning of concrete, and focused more on the typographic style of the words.

Akrim uses concrete in part for its accessibility and his familiarity with the material, and partly because of the permanence that it represents. Because many of Mustapha’s works relate to the dichotomy between what the government promises its people and what the people actually receive, concrete serves as a vehicle for showing this irony. This workshop allowed students to fully understand the effort that goes into Akrim’s work and how it is as much a complex creative experience as it is physically labor intensive process.

To start off the tutorial, Akrim directed the students to cut their words out of the polystyrene mold with a drill.  After cutting squares surrounding each word out of the polystyrene, they placed the print out of their words on the polystyrene and poked holes through the page, outlining each letter.

Students traced over the imprinted poke holes left in the polystyrene, then began to cut out their words; the negative space being left in order to be filled in with concrete.

Students left their molds in Mustapha Akrim’s studio for a few days, and are set to retrieve them tomorrow, Saturday March 29.

Artists often must take day jobs to support themselves, but Mustapha Akrim is unusual in that he came to his artistic career through his day job.  Having graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in his native Morocco, Akrim found it difficult to find employment after graduation; so to pay the bills he worked with his father, a builder.  In his off hours he used his father’s workshop for artistic projects, and he continues to draw inspiration from his father’s career.  His 2011 work Bidoun (Without) is a vivid example: “I took my father’s tools and put them all together,” says Akrim of the toolbox-like result—and then, of course, “I bought him new tools.”

The title of Bidoun (Without) refers to the lack of steady jobs for young Moroccans like himself, a theme echoed throughout his oeuvre.  His most famous piece, Article 13, is a rendering of the eponymous section of the Moroccan constitution, which reads, “All citizens have equal rights of education and employment.”  But Akrim says, of this and similarly lofty provisions, “this exists just in the constitution—and the social reality, the economic reality, that’s another thing.”  To make this point, he casts Article 13 in concrete—the medium of his father’s handiwork.

Akrim will be creating several works for our upcoming exhibition, Memory || Place || Desire, including a version of his Article 25.  Drawn from the 2011 revision of the Moroccan constitution, which was implemented by the king to placate dissenters during the Arab Spring, Article 25 guarantees that “all citizens have the freedom of thought, ideas, artistic expression and creation”—but like Article 13,  Article 25 is also cast in concrete.  Moroccan artists may be guaranteed freedom of expression, at least in the letter of the law; but these promises are empty, just like the shape in which he arranges the words of Article 25.

Akrim will be in residence at Haverford through March 27.

When Moroccan artist Mohamed El Baz visited Professor Carol Solomon’s Curatorial Praxis class last Wednesday, February 26^th, he did more than just display some of his works.  He recruited students in the class to help him create his video installation for the upcoming exhibition.  The video, which was created by having students sing a song that was significant to them and spin around the camera as if they were taking a ‘selfie,’ was filmed entirely on campus.

One of the participants was Elisabeth Hawthorne ’17, who chose to sing the Irish folk tune “Raglan Road.”  “There was an uncanny, uneasily personal relationship with the camera,” she recalled.  As for the spinning itself, Hawthorne noted, “it is harder than it seems.”

Another student said the singing itself made her feel “invigorated.”  “There was a freedom I had never really experienced before that moment and I enjoyed every moment of it.”

Both students also had very positive things to say about the actual experience of working with Mohamed.  “I got the sense that he was sure of his process and method of creation whereas I had no idea what to expect,” said Hawthorne.  The other student described the unique experience as “fun and new.”

El Baz, who is currently at Haverford thanks to the Mellon Creative Residencies Program, describes all of his work as falling under the title Bricoler l’incurable, or “Mending the Incurable.”  His art is dynamic, to say the least.  Recurring themes include violence, freedom, and the occasional irony, among other things.  As parts of recent works, he has had his viewers shoot paintballs at a map of the world and has even figured out what modern drug prescriptions would be given to some of history’s most famous artists.

The video installation was unveiled at an Open Studio night on Tuesday at the squash courts under Ryan Gymnasium.