In the years after independence, new art forms and practices flourished at the Casablanca Ecole des Beaux-Arts, transforming the colonial relic into a zeitgeist of Moroccan modernism. Casablanca School artists, including Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chebaa, and Mohammed Melehi, defined the modernist movement in Morocco through their radical anticolonial pedagogy and their use of abstraction as a means of expanding the horizons of postcolonial national culture. Best known for their iconic outdoor exhibition in the large public plaza, Djemaa al Fna, in Marrakech, and for their collaborations with the cultural and political journal Souffles, the Casablanca School artists shaped the Moroccan experience of modernism through their visual arts activism. In Moroccan Modernism, Holiday Powers argues that the pedagogy and transnational solidarities of this generation of artists were intrinsic to their broader artistic projects. Powers advances a novel reading of Moroccan modernism that is rooted in its cosmopolitan national context and in the transnational anticolonial, pan-African, and pan-Arab intellectual movements that defined the era.

This groundbreaking study of Moroccan modernism in the visual arts contextualizes the work in terms of postcolonial struggles and a constellation of contemporary artistic movements.

About the Author
Holiday Powers is an assistant professor of art history at VCUarts Qatar. Her work has appeared in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, the Journal of North African Studies, and in numerous book chapters.


Book Information
ISBN 9780821425794
Author Holiday Powers
Format Hardback
Page Count 392
Imprint Ohio University Press
Publisher Ohio University Press