WALKING THROUGH the bright and open gallery halls of Marrakech’s Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, better known as MACAAL, breathing in the scents of fresh paint, floor polish, and Moroccan mint tea, listening to the excited hubbub of my fellow visitors as they tramped to and fro, I was struck by the profound realization that I had myself roamed further from the beaten path of my artistic knowledge than I had first anticipated. In spite of my professed interest in MENA-region art, I must admit that I am rather more familiar with the former part of that acronym—that being the Middle East—than I am with the latter, North Africa. While institutions such as the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia paint a vivid and varied image of this rich creative tapestry through their many exhibitions and exchanges, until now I had never had the opportunity to see North African art on its home turf. With February ushering in the grand reopening of MACAAL, following eighteen months of extensive redevelopments, I was excited by the opportunity afforded by its return to broaden my horizons and deepen my understanding.
First opened in 2016, MACAAL is a nonprofit contemporary art museum, one of the first of its kind in North Africa, showcasing works from Morocco in specific and Africa at large before international audiences, and nurturing the development of regional artists through various creative initiatives and support programs. However, MACAAL’s relative youthfulness as an artistic institution belies a history that stretches back some forty years, originating in the private collection of the prominent Moroccan real estate developer and passionate art lover Alami Lazraq. Following in his father’s footsteps, Othman Lazraq would go on to expand this collection further, as well as becoming the director of Fondation Alliances in 2013 and later creating MACAAL itself. Even today, serving as both the president of MACAAL and the director of Fondation Alliances, Othman Lazraq and his allies remain tirelessly committed to expanding the collection, which now forms the foundation of the museum.
MACAAL’s collection is vast and diverse, encompassing more than two thousand works across a wide variety of media, from paintings and sculptures to more recent additions in photography and digital art. As the scope of the museum has grown over the years, so too has the geographical range of works that the institution has acquired; what was once an exclusive selection of established and pioneering figures from within Morocco’s artistic scene—many of whom were personal friends to Alami Lazraq—is joined today by other important works from across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond to form a truly transnational collection, albeit still one primarily dedicated to Moroccan and North African art.
However, despite these successes, MACAAL’s facilities still had room for improvement, and so the museum closed its doors in the spring of 2023 to undertake a major redesign focused on improving public accessibility. In the aftermath of Marrakech’s September 2023 earthquake, the project was further expanded to include structural reinforcements as well.
As an admitted first-time visitor to Morocco, I have to say my own knowledge of both the country and its creative scene prior to this excursion was—to say the least—rather limited, built on a foundation of exhibitions of Moroccan art and culture in other countries that could only impart so much of Morocco’s rich and incredibly diverse cultural heritage. I knew a little of the prominence of traditional crafts in Moroccan culture, for example, and of the dizzying array of textiles, jewelry, ceramics, metalwork, marquetry, and leather goods, but I did not appreciate the influence these enduring craftworks have had on much of Moroccan modern art. Woven into this artistic legacy is a further concern for the preservation of Morocco’s multifarious identities and voices—be they the indigenous Amazigh people; Arabs; Muslims; Christians; or Jews—in the face of both the legacy of colonialism and modern-day globalization: an active question of what to embrace, what to discard, and what to challenge.
This particular facet was clearly apparent from the moment I entered MACAAL for the first time, just a few days before the official reopening, when I was greeted by In the Arms of the Earth, a new piece of monumental scale, created for the inaugural exhibition “Seven Contours, One Collection” by Moroccan architect and anthropologist Salima Naji. Framed by the clean angles and white walls of MACAAL’s new main atrium, sitting at the heart of the exhibition as a bridge between past, present, and future, the piece is an enclosed, walled shelter that embodies the local materials and construction methods of Morocco’s precolonial era, centering upon adobe, rammed earth, and palm fronds. Yet, at the same time, it stands as an example of modern, environmentally sustainable design—a positive, future-facing project rooted in ancient traditions.
As I talked with Naji, standing with her inside the structure, imagine my surprise when she suddenly turned and—with positive glee—started to scratch the walls of her creation with her fingernails, pointing out not only the techniques that she had used to assemble her piece, but also the errors that she had made in the process; for instance, the unsuitably dry soil she had taken from MACAAL’s grounds had led to an imperfect batch of bricks that would crumble under her touch. In a world of “look but don’t touch” installations made to be admired in isolation rather than interacted with, I could not help but feel moved by her candor and her insistence that audiences should be allowed to physically appraise her efforts in order to facilitate their own understanding; to feel the solidity—or lack thereof—of these materials.
This undercurrent of bridging the gap between audience and art permeates the entire exhibition. Curated by Morad Montazami and Madeleine de Colnet, in cooperation with MACAAL artistic director Meriem Berrada and scenographer Franck Houndégla, “Seven Contours, One Collection” is the institution’s first exhibition entirely composed of works held by the museum’s collection, hosted within a newly refurbished and redesigned show space that serves as a setting for more than one hundred fifty works, organized into a series of seven themed rooms based around a series of key topics.
While discussing the conception of the exhibition, de Colnet explained to me that the idea of “Seven Contours, One Collection” was never to invent or write a history of African art; the ideas presented—each encapsulated by a one-word title, a verb representing a unique action—were inspired by the works themselves, providing a strong backbone to the exhibition. There has also been a conscientious push to ensure that the collection speaks to current issues, such as highlighting the contributions of women and other marginalized creators.
Spread across two floors, the exhibition’s seven sections lead visitors through a fascinating exploration of the region’s contemporary art, beginning with the ground floor galleries. Each section is further accompanied by a video interview—played in situ—providing the perspectives of prominent African and African-diaspora academics and intellectuals, including such luminaries as decolonial theoretician Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and philosophers Nadia Yala Kisukidi and Dénètem Touam Bona.
DECOLONIZE is perhaps the most direct in its intent, boldly situated at the exhibition’s forefront, close to the entrance, ensuring that it is among the first themes that visitors will encounter. The narratives and iconography of colonial power are interrogated and overturned through the works of the artists featured within, such as the Tunisian artist Nidhal Chamekh, whose “Our Faces” series—represented here by Our Faces D—transforms the Orientalized depictions of First World War Amazigh and Senegalese tirailleurs found in French colonial propaganda by juxtaposing contradictory images within a single portrait, literally breaking the stereotyped, reductive image to provoke a deeper consideration of the subjects. By comparison, COHABIT feels more introspective if no less urgent, spotlighting artists whose work engages with humanity’s rapidly changing relationship with the natural world, touching upon ecological issues of drought, deforestation, and dwindling resources, attempting to offer pathways toward coexistence and healing. As we head further inside, we also pass through INITIATE and TRANSCRIBE, the former offering insight into the forgotten mysticism and rituals of the region, and the wisdom that remains therein for us in modernity, while the latter investigates the idiomatic nature of signs, symbols, and components of language.
Ascending the stairs to the upper level, we encounter the second site-specific commission of the exhibition, a triptych of wall-hanging scrolls by Tunisian artist Aïcha Snoussi, an expansion of her previous Cyborg Archeology work. Blending protean, anatomical forms and fictive languages with traditional Tunisian handwritten parchments, she weaves her own alternative, anachronistic mythology that embraces those sidelined or erased from history: a deliberately fragmentary record that encourages the viewer to consider what truths may dwell within the undefined gaps of our own imperfect understanding.
We then reach CONVERGE, in which the gathered works seek to explore experiences of multiple African diaspora communities around the world, commenting upon the difficulties that many Africans still face when attempting to travel beyond their homelands—despite the ease with which Africa’s resources and wealth are accepted by others—and the countercultural movements created in response to these systemic injustices. Mahjouba 4, a multimedia piece by Algerian-born Belgian artist Eric van Hove, puts forth a motorcycle entirely assembled from custom-made parts, all hand-crafted by Moroccan artisans. From here, we transition to PROMISE—located opposite MACAAL’s new Timeline Room, highlighting key events in both African art and history—which pays homage to Marrakech’s own importance as a center for African art, before concluding our journey at WEAVE, delving into the region’s rich craft heritage and inventive use of repurposed materials and traditional techniques.
Going forward, MACAAL intends to regularly rotate the works shown under each heading with fresh pieces pulled from the rest of the museum’s collection, ensuring a continuous dialogue and discussion about the history and direction of art within the region. Combined with the addition of an annualized site-specific installation program, continuing artists’ residencies and community workshops, a new media library, and enhanced indoor and outdoor public spaces including the museum’s gorgeous gardens, there is a palpable air of blue-sky thinking about MACAAL and its plans for the future.
Coming away from the newly revamped MACAAL, I can say that the museum offers an exceptionally thorough and varied introduction to the world of Moroccan and North African art, filled with an incredible collection of artworks—new and old—in which to immerse oneself. And yet MACAAL’s continuing efforts to center the works on display within its space and to enmesh itself within Morocco’s creative community, rather than resting on its laurels, is refreshingly altruistic in its approach. In many ways, “Seven Contours, One Collection” looks poised to mirror the famous souks of Marrakech: a vibrant, colorful, ever-changing tapestry of spectacular sights that perfectly evoke the creativity and history of this fascinating locale.
