Until April 30, the Espace Actua in Casablanca presents "Chromatic Resonance," where four African artists weave a playful visual and sound score, dedicated to Gnaoua culture.
Resolutely inter-African, the exhibition "Chromatic Resonance" brings together Moroccan artists Lamia Naji and Mohamed Tabal, Ghanaian photographer Derrick Ofosu Boateng, and Togolese multidisciplinary artist Elom 20ce. All celebrate Gnaoua culture, whose African roots are now well known to us through brotherhoods present notably in the Essaouira region. It is in this city that Lamia Naji's black and white series, Primary Colors, is set, in which the photographer documents different moments of the lila, through often tight framing from which faces are absent. The attention is focused more on the step of a maâlem, a master musician presiding over the ceremony, on the sharp blade placed on the knees of a participant suggesting the upcoming sacrifice of an animal, or on the rhythmic movements of the followers presiding over the trance that the photographer captures in all its vibratory intensity.
A general public exhibition
The painting of Tabal, a native of Essaouira and himself a member of a Gnaoua brotherhood, extends the stages of the lila whose bright colors are associated with the different mlouks, maritime or celestial spirits. Often represented in relief, through a technique he shares with other singular artists of Essaouira such as Ali Maimoun, the animal or human figures painted by Tabal draw a cosmogony in which music is omnipresent. A musicality that the exhibition highlights with finesse, thanks to a sound installation by the Togolese artist Elom 20ce — mixing the rustle of cowries and jazz melody — and a scenography thought of as a visual score, alternating Lamia Naji's black and white photographs and those, colorful, of the Ghanaian Derrick Ofosu Boateng. Facing them, Qasidas by Maâlem Hamid El Kasri are suspended in front of a floor of colorful rugs inviting meditation. More playful, the reappropriation that artists Derrick Ofosu Boateng and Elom 20ce make of Gnaoua culture, through stagings saturating colors or a hybrid sound installation, seems above all to invite a young audience to discover the richness of a sometimes unknown heritage.
Olivier Rachet
Exhibition "Chromatic Resonance," with Lamia Naji, Mohamed Tabal, Derrick Ofosu Boateng, and Elom 20ce, Espace d'art Actua, Attijariwafa bank Foundation, until April 30, 2025.
The article In Casablanca, four artists pay tribute to the Gnaoua heritage appeared first on Diptyk Magazine.