L’Atelier 21 is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition of visual artist M’barek Bouhchichi. Entitled Who I Am, Who We Are, the exhibition will run from May 27 to July 5, 2025.
Through a series of powerful portraits painted directly onto rubber sheets, M’barek Bouhchichi continues his exploration where art, memory, and politics intertwine to bring forth a new visual order. Far from an illustrative approach, his painting becomes a space of symbolic resistance, where bodies reemerge as bearers of long-marginalized histories.
In the exhibition catalogue, art historian Jamila Moroder sheds light on the artist’s approach in the following terms: «These pictorial presences are born from real encounters with members of the Ismgans/Ismkhan community, from which most Gnawa musicians originate, in Khamlia, near Merzouga in the northeast of Morocco, encounters that have left an enduring mark on the artist, as well as from faces remembered or imagined, that emerge from an inner space that only painting can access. »
Black Moroccans form the core subject matter on which Bouhchichi’s work is grounded. Employing the quintessential retinal medium—painting—the artist passionately pursues his practice of rendering visible Black men and women, along with the cultural practices that are unique to them. Jamila Moroder describes the artist’s obsession with this theme in these words: «This is not a mere material effect for aesthetic purposes, but an element charged with meaning, carrying within itself a history of catastrophes and sedimentation, a history that resonates with the Black body bear- ing the traces of History. »
She continues: «M’barek Bouhchichi’s painting is neither simple figuration nor pure representation: it unfolds as a sensitive archae- ology, a practice that interweaves the depths of the earth – bitumen, mica – with light and color, in order to explore what an ethics of the gaze might be »
M’barek Bouhchichi’s works have entered prestigious collections, including those of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (France), the Helga de Alvear Museum of Contemporary Art (Spain), the CALOSA Foundation (Mexico), the American Friends of the Arts in North Africa Foundation (USA), the H Foundation (Madagascar), the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Morocco), and the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL, Morocco).
The artist lives and works in Tahannaout, Morocco.
Press release from L’Atelier 21
Image: M’barek Bouhchichi. Héritage. 2025. Mixed technique on rubber. 180 x 160 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and L’Atelier 21
