Before Our Eyes

“Before Our Eyes. Other Cartographies of the Rif” at Macba, Barcelona, questions the idea of the artistic object and the processes of museum institutions.

The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Macba) presents the exhibition “Before Our Eyes. Other Cartographies of the Rif”, in which a specific geographic region – the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco – becomes a springboard from which to discover a place and a specific way of making, understanding and conceiving artistic production that goes beyond institutional and commercial networks.

The exhibition, which is in line with the Museum’s ongoing interest in contemporary art from the southern Mediterranean area, includes works by individual artists as well as pieces that have been anonymously or collectively produced. Through a selection of recent and specifically commissioned works arising from expeditions and artist residencies in the Rif region, the exhibition offers a series of investigations on the subject, the work of art as document and the work as object.

“Before Our Eyes. Other Cartographies of the Rif” explores the tradition of expeditions in the complex region of the Rif to reflect on how this specific context can be translated into artistic production at the present time. The artists invited to take part in the exhibition are Mustapha Akrim, Yto Barrada, Gabriella Ciancimino, Shezad Dawood, Ninar Esber, Patricia Esquivias, Badr El Hammami, Camille Henrot, Mohamed Larbi Rahali, Grace Ndiritu, Younès Rahmoun, Francesc Ruiz and Oriol Vilanova. Their works will question our perception of history, its meanings and the narratives that construct it in a very specific context. Also included in the show, as a reference, are a series of drawings from Brion Gysin’s notebook Les Chants de Marrakech.

Themes such as orality, rituals, the origins of traditions and their rewriting in order to produce new readings of history; comics understood as a medium allowing for the circulation of alternative histories to the official one; the different processes that legitimise a work of art; archives as mechanisms for storing historical facts selectively; the singularities that have turned Morocco into a captivating place for Europeans and North-Americans; the migration flows between Africa and Europe; and the changing role of women in society, among many others, are the starting points for the works presented in the exhibition.

until May 18, 2014
Before Our Eyes. Other Cartographies of the Rif
Curated by Abdellah Karroum and Soledad Gutiérrez
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Macba)
Plaça dels Àngels, 1, Barcelona

Before Our Eyes

“Before Our Eyes. Other Cartographies of the Rif” at Macba, Barcelona, questions the idea of the artistic object and the processes of museum institutions.

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