Morocco hosts considered one of Africa’s first exhibitions of Cuban artwork, a milestone for Afro-Cuban painters
RABAT, Morocco — When Morocco ‘s King Mohamed VI visited Havana in 2017, Cuban-American gallery proprietor Alberto Magnan impressed him with a “full immersion” within the Caribbean island’s artwork and tradition, drawing a line between the cultural and historic themes tackled by Cuban artists and people from throughout Africa.
Seven years after that encounter, one of many first exhibitions of Cuban artwork at an African museum is displaying at Morocco’s Mohammed VI Museum of Trendy and Modern Artwork.
It is a part of an effort to provide guests a view past the European artists who usually stay a part of the varsity curriculum within the North African nation and different former French colonies, museum director Abdelaziz El Idrissi mentioned.
“The Moroccan public may know Giacometti, Picasso or impressionists,” El Idrissi mentioned. The museum has proven all of them. “We’ve seen them and are searching for different issues, too.”
The Cuba present comprises 44 items by Wifredo Lam — a significant displaying of the Afro-Cuban painter’s work greater than a 12 months earlier than New York Metropolis’s Museum of Trendy Artwork will honor him with a profession retrospective present in 2025.
“We’re type of beating MoMA to the punch,” Magnan mentioned.
The Morocco present additionally marks the primary time that the work of one other luminary, Jose Angel Toirac, is being displayed outdoors Cuba. Beforehand, his work depicting the nation’s late anti-capitalist president Fidel Castro within the iconography of American ads and client tradition weren’t allowed off the island.
Different works in “Cuban Artwork: On the opposite facet of the Atlantic” — open till June 16 — present prevalent themes in Cuban artwork starting from isolation and financial embargo to heritage and id.
In Cuba, nearly half of the inhabitants identifies as combined race and greater than 1 million individuals are Afro-Cuban. The island’s range is a recurring topic for its painters and artists, together with Lam. That is why it was vital to point out his work — together with work of African-inspired masks and use of vibrant shade — in Africa, Magnan mentioned.
Morocco is amongst international locations which have proven new curiosity in Cuban artwork since america restored diplomatic ties with Cuba in 2014 and Castro died in 2016. American artwork sellers and main museums flocked to the beforehand difficult-to-visit island.
However the intrigue was curbed by the COVID-19 pandemic and former U.S. President Donald Trump’s resolution to redesignate the nation as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” Magnan mentioned.
In the meantime, Morocco has elevated funding for arts and tradition in an effort to spice up its “geopolitical tender energy” in North Africa and past.
In each Morocco and Cuba, twentieth century artists responded to political transition — decolonization in Morocco, revolution in Cuba — by drawing from historical past and fascinating in tendencies shaping modern artwork worldwide.
However the present present doesn’t contact on Moroccan-Cuban diplomatic relations, which have been restored following King Mohamed VI’s 2017 go to to Cuba.
The international locations had reduce ties a long time in the past over Cuba’s place on the disputed Western Sahara, which Morocco claims. Cuba has traditionally skilled Sahrawi troopers and medical doctors and backed the Polisario Entrance’s agenda on the United Nations.
