Visual Art Exhibition .
Freedom? .
Special Projects
Mustapha Akrim’s (b. 1981, lives and works in Rabat and Sale) installations question the nature of work and the difference between construction and creating art in light of society’s state of constant change. He received his diploma from the Institut National des Beaux-Arts de Tétouan in 2008 and this is his first exhibition in a museum in Morocco. Akrim has participated in workshops in Namibia, Jordan, France, and Morocco, and has also been in residence at L’appartement 22 in Rabat. He is part of a generation of artists that is developing a new language with which to redefine the basis of expression in the visual arts in Morocco. With a nuanced understanding of history and the dynamics of power, this generation searches for a new freedom in its break from the aesthetics developed in the immediate post-colonial period and after.
Mustapha Akrim’s allegorical building tools of monumental scale express the frustrations inherent in work and activity, an amplification of the project he began while in residence at L’appartement 22. Citing the situation of the lack of work, particularly for youth, Akrim also points to the widespread inability faced in grasping the tools available for societal transformation. Akrim’s "Chantier," referencing visualy to Marcel Duchamp’s "Étant Donnés," narrowly defines public space in regard to itself by limiting its possible vantage points.
