A lab for art in the public realm

Since the late 1960s, artists from the Casablanca Art School embarked down new paths to present their art in the urban space and to use the city as a space for reflec­tion on their art. In 1969, they first tried out the strategy with street exhi­bi­tions enti­tled “Présence Plas­tique” in public plazas in Marrakesh and Casablanca, and as of 1978 they turned the small town of Asilah in North Morocco into a lab for art in the public realm. Their wish to take art out of elitist insti­tu­tions and quite liter­ally onto the street and to engage with the culture and cultural heritage of Moroccan cities had a strong echo in Asilah in a way that assumed new tones even if there was as good as no resounding response in the major cities.

There were already plans afloat for an inter­na­tional cultural festival in Asilah during the summer months of 1978, and these in part merged with the “moussem” or commu­nity festival orga­nized by Benaïssa, Maraini, and Melehi. In its first year, the program was accord­ingly diverse and indeed almost over­laden with ideas. Over the course of several weeks that summer there were exhi­bi­tions, concerts, theater perfor­mances and film screen­ings, rounded out by work­shops and confer­ences. As early as the spring, impor­tant artists in Morocco were invited to take part who were also repre­sen­ta­tives of the Casablanca Art School or at least consid­ered part of its wider circle, and they were asked to design the facades of houses in Asilah. Among them were Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Melehi, Miloud Labied, Mohamed Hamidi, Mohamed Chabâa, Saad Hassani, Chaibia Talal, Hossein Miloudi, Mohamed Kacimi, and Abder­rah­mane Rahoule.

Their large, very colorful wall paint­ings on the white houses in the Medina, the old part of town, became the trade­mark of the new festival and the town itself. Most of them were produced in collab­o­ra­tion with school chil­dren, remained on the respec­tive walls for a year, and were then redesigned by the artists who were then invited to partic­i­pate. More­over, from the very begin­ning, greater atten­tion was paid to inte­grating Asilah’s inhab­i­tants into the festival. During the summer, local stores were able to benefit from the thou­sands of visi­tors, money flowed into restoring histor­ical build­ings and urban infra­struc­ture, an old palace was expanded into a cultural center, and new cultural facil­i­ties were set up. Above all chil­dren and young people were able to take part, with Toni Maraini acting as the educa­tional director, and helped white­wash the walls, keep the town clean, and assist the artists in their work.