Farid Belkahia, the Cosmogonic artist

30 September - 30 December 2021

  • Farid Belkahia is considered the precursor of modern and contemporary art in Morocco, and a seminal figure for Global South and trans-Mediterranean modernism.

    Appointed director of the Casablanca Art School in 1962, at the age of 28 years old, where he remains so until 1974, Belkahia established a national legacy in post-Independence Morocco, through a new experimental pedagogy that explored the second or modern life of traditional arts and crafts (tapestry, pottery, jewellery, architecture, calligraphy, the painted ceilings of rural mosques in the Sous and the High Atlas…). A famous statement that Belkahia cultivated throughout his overall artistic philosophy was that “tradition is the future of Man”.

    Beyond the outstanding legacy of the Casablanca Art School (made alongside with Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Chabâa, Toni Maraini and Bert Flint among others), Belkahia can also be described as one of the forerunners of an aesthetics or attitude which can be named “cosmogonic”. Indeed for his exploration of post-vernacular shapes and alphabets, in relation to the elements of Nature/Landscape, but a transformative and personified one. The cosmogonic artist (one can think also of Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland or closer to Belkahia of Mohamed Melehi) combines atmospheric, astral and popular symbols; he navigates between the Esoteric and the Erotic.

  • The work Aube (1984) stands clearly of the most eloquent manifestation of such attitude, reaching a peak in his art...
    Aube, 1984 Dye on skin and wood

    The work Aube (1984) stands  clearly of the most eloquent manifestation of such attitude, reaching a peak in his art of the ambivalence and metamorphosis (abstract/figurative, human/animal, femininity/masculinity…). It represents a climax in Belkahia’s poetics and large scale works of the 1980s, made of nomadic signs and totemic structures. On the left part of the work, one identifies the semi-circle sun rays or “rainbow” like element surrounded by the geographical arrows, pointing at opposite directions, and the voluptuous “cloud” of intertwined red lines, which appears as early as in Belkahia’s 1960s drawing (with its anthropomorphic function to hide a couple or potential bodies making love).

     

  • The work Composition from 1971 responds to Belkahia’s major innovation of the 1970s: the rehabilitation of copper in the field...
    Composition, 1971, Copper relief

    The work Composition from 1971 responds to Belkahia’s major innovation of the 1970s: the rehabilitation of copper in the field of modern art. Seen as the most popular material, copper is omnipresent in every Souks, Medinas and suburban markets of Morocco, especially in Marrakech where Belkahia’s legacy resonates the most loudly. By managing to create the most refined geometric forces and optical vibrations, and give nobility to the raw and crude copper, Belkahia demonstrates skills of an alchemist. Someone who works beyond painting and sculptor, foreseeing a new dimension where eventually the border of abstract/figurative art dissolve or loses its effectivity – hence the definition of the Cosmogonic artist.

  • Belkahia’s copper works from 1971 (which are exhibited for the first time at Galerie L’Atelier in Rabat directed by Pauline...
    Couple Seins, 2000, Pigments on skins

    Belkahia’s copper works from 1971 (which are exhibited for the first time at Galerie L’Atelier in Rabat directed by Pauline de Mazières), anticipate his later skin works and “shaped canvas” of the late 1970s. Indeed by revealing his predilection for bodily and biomorphic shapes, between implicit and more explicit sexual metaphors and symbols (sometimes as overtly as in the work Couple Seins of 2000 for instance). The copper works – alike the works using animal skin instead of canvas and henna dye instead of oil painting – also underline further Belkahia’s African roots. The artist overall works celebrate the multicultural ecosystem flourishing between the Jemaa el-Fna square of Marrakech and the broader desert routes of the Sahara connecting Morocco to Niger, Mauritania… countries visited by Belkahia who finds strong affinity with their sculptural and textile traditions. One can also note very interesting post-calligraphic connections between Belkahia and the important Sudanese artist Ibrahim el-Salahi.

    • Arbre de vie No. VII Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de vie No. VII
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm
    • Arbre de vie No. VI Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de vie No. VI
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm
    • Arbre de Vie No.III, 1989 Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de Vie No.III, 1989
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm
    • Arbre de Vie No.V, 1989 Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de Vie No.V, 1989
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm
    • Arbre de Vie No.IV, 1989 Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de Vie No.IV, 1989
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm
    • Arbre de Vie No.I, 1989 Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de Vie No.I, 1989
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm
    • Arbre de Vie No.II, 1989 Pigments on textile 48h x 52w cm
      Arbre de Vie No.II, 1989
      Pigments on textile
      48h x 52w cm

  • The Arbre de vie (Tree of life) series was one of Belkahia’s best kept secret garden, in which those cosmic lines and sensual manifestations continue their permanent energetic movement. One can decipher signs and symbols reminders of Afro-Berber Amazigh culture and Tifinagh alphabet rooted far beyond North Africa, into a trans-Saharan and African map here again. Each Tree of life concentrates the hybridization process expanding in Belkahia’s large skin works: the numerous arrows, spirals and continents floating adrift that populate his universe, rather than encouraging ornamental dispersion, tend on the contrary irrevocably towards a centre, though sometimes an  invisible one. As Belkahia would say with a sense of mystic: “Every individual is locked into a circle, a sort of personal cosmos in which he is subjected to the pressure that comes from all directions, a pressure that is liberated through trance.”

     

    Morad Montazami, September 2021

    Frieze Masters 2021, Selma Feriani Gallery

     

    Morad Montazami is an art historian, a publisher and a curator. He is the director of Zamân Books & Curating,committed to transnational studies of Arab, Asian and African modernities.