Following an international descent of visitors for 1-54 art fair, a group exhibition at MACAAL surveys the politics of identity through 12 global voicesMarrakech: a city drenched in a soft pink hue and dense with propositions by overzealous merchants, hazardous scootering in the labyrinthine medina and a new whiff of spice at every turn. This is a city brimming with creativity, yet spaces and events dedicated to contemporary African art are more of a rarity.
‘You guys in the west, every day you’re engaging with art, you have billboards and tonnes of magazines on art. We don’t have art unless you move your ass and go and get it!’ exclaims Othman Lazraq, founder and president of MACAAL .
Their latest international group exhibition begins with a song by Yoko Ono and ends with 12 intensely personal human stories, narrated through all manner of media from flowers to sugar and cargo crates. The show is a chance to free the blind spots in our understanding of identity, place and cultural osmosis in Africa and far beyond. As exhibition curator, Marie-Ann Yemsi succinctly puts it, ‘As a curator, my only weapon is culture.
‘Have You Seen A Horizon Lately?’, the exhibition’s title, is branded a large white billboard on MACAAL’s façade. This is the name of a song from Yoko Ono’s 1973 album, and forms part of her ‘Instructions’ series which deploys language as a tool to unite, provoke and get us thinking before we’ve even passed the museum doors.
Inside, there’s a distant sound of running water. Turning into the central atrium, we find the root of the source, Daniel Otero Torres’an imposing wooden tower of buckets, hosing and what looks to be corrugated roofing. Water trickles down, making this fountain of humble detritus appear majestic, rhythmic and meditative. Otero Torres was inspired by a visit to the Emberá, a Columbian community on the banks of the Atrato River.