Moroccan artists at the Venice Bienale

Fathiya Tahiri and Mahi Binebine are the artists representing Morocco at this year’s Venice Biennale. This is a return for Fathiya, who also exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale back in 2005. The exhibition has been very popular and is beautifully mounted in an old church. The View from Fez made the journey to Venice and here is our report.

The Morocco Pavilion at Biennale 2009 is in an extraordinary position in the centre of the most popular tourist area of Venice. This has meant that the Moroccans have had a much wider exposure than many of the pavilions in the actual Biennale site.
Fathiya Tahiri and Mahi Binebine, though both linked to the material use of painting, during their expressive training, have also developed different approaches in the field of sculpture.

Fathiya Tahiri began on the artistic scene with a vast production of jewel sculptures, then translated this skill into painting, in countless expressive variations.

Her canvases reveal an attentive scanning of colour which prefers bright pure tones, giving life to extensive descriptive formulae that are inspired by the emotions of the artist, sensitive to intimate perceptions.

A border line in which the artist’s brush insists with a singular expressive force on a timbre of colour, creating fascinating backgrounds that then become the metaphor of an existential condition. Fathiya Tahiri brings about an aesthetic revolution, hovering between an idea of beauty seen as loyalty to an uncorrupted model and the study of new forms, seeking the
unquenchable need for poetic renewal, the intimate essence of art.

Fascinating images, captivating the beholder with the lyrical atmosphere that emanates from their harmony of colours, spring from the imagination of Mahi Binebine. They are often silent masks or trapped figures. They are the same ones that the artist tells us about in his novels, desperate journeys yearning to ask fate for a second chance. Binebine’s work has a formal neatness interrupted by melodic colour combinations created using pure pigments applied directly on the canvas and then skilfully modified by the hands of the artist or by extreme actions that burn the surface. So pure colour may just as easily be silent language, a means of detaching sensations or an element of disturbance.

Art, literature, topical events and tradition live side by side in the works of these two artists. Because in the centre of their art there is always a state of tension involving the natural, primeval world that man too frequently ignores, ill-treats or insults.

Details :

Open to the public : 7 June - 22 November 2009 ; opening hours 10.00 am - 6.00 pm
(closed on Mondays - except Monday 8 June)
Venue : Chiesa Santa Maria della Pietà, Riva degli Schiavoni, Castello 3701, 30122 Venice
Artists : Fathiya Tahiri, Mahi Binebine
Curator : Paolo De Grandis
Commissioners : Dr. Mohiedine El Kadiri Boutchich, Consul General of Morocco in Milan ;
Paolo De Grandis, Director of Musée Hassan - Rabat
Deputy Commissioner : Carlotta Scarpa
Organizer : Arte Communications (www.artecommunications.com)
In collaboration with : Consulate General of Morocco in Milan
Under the patronage of : Musée Hassan, Rabat