In the years after independence, new art forms and practices flourished at the Casablanca École des beaux-arts, transforming the colonial relic into a wellspring of Moroccan modernism. Casablanca School artists, including Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chebaa, and Mohammed Melehi, defined the modernist movement in Morocco. Their visual arts activism was displayed at their iconic outdoor exhibition in Marrakech, in their collaborations with the cultural and political journal Souffles, through their radical anticolonial pedagogy, and through their use of abstraction to expand the horizons of postcolonial national culture.
In Moroccan Modernism (Ohio University Press, 2024), Holiday Powers argues that the pedagogy and transnational solidarities of this generation of artists were intrinsic to their broader artistic projects. She advances a novel reading of Moroccan modernism that is rooted in its cosmopolitan national context and in Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism, the transnational anticolonial intellectual movements that defined the era.
Holiday Powers is assistant professor of global modern and contemporary art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. Her research emphasizes the articulation of local and transnational discourses in modern and contemporary art, particularly within the Arab world, from the perspective of postcolonial and feminist theory. She has contributed to publications including Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and the Journal of North African Studies andbook chapters for publications including Under the Skin: Feminist Art from the Middle East and North Africa Today. She has additionally been active in contemporary art, including her role as Artistic Program Coordinator and Parallel Projects for the Marrakech Biennale 5.
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