“Even until the 2000s, these artists were totally forgotten,” says Morad Montazami about the group of artists who coalesced around the Casablanca Art School in the 1960s. “It took until the time of the new interest in non-western modernism for them to be remembered outside of Morocco.”
Tate St Ives's new exhibition, running until January 14 in Cornwall, England, explores this moment – widely acknowledged as one of the most significant postcolonial movements in modern art. The exhibition, which is co-produced by the Sharjah Art Foundation, will come to the UAE next year.
Curated by Madeleine de Colnet and Morad Montazami in conjunction with Tate St Ives director Anne Barlow and assistant curator Giles Jackson, the Casablanca Art School exhibition shows the artists who were working in the Moroccan coastal city from the 1960s to the 80s.
The group exemplifies the radical promise of a generation of young artists at the time, who matched the political excitement of independence with art that simultaneously celebrated their country’s tribal and new national identities.
The change in Casablanca began when the artist Farid Belkahia became head of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1962.
Belkahia overhauled the school’s French-led curriculum to look towards local and Amazigh (Berber) motifs and practices: painting on calfskin – as Amazigh tribesmen did – instead of canvas; and taking inspiration from local tattoo scarring, not European landscapes.
He also appointed new artists to the faculty, including most famously Mohamed Melehi and Mohammed Chabaa, who translated the geometric patterns of vernacular Moroccan artistry into brightly coloured graphic canvasses that rang out with boldness and unbridled energy.
Most importantly, the show's lead curator Montazami says, the artists of the Casablanca school formed an infrastructure in which new artwork could develop.
Montazami says they did not just create a school in the sense of making a school in the building, but in the sense of creating a Global South platform that didn't exist in other developing countries.
“I’m talking about a modern art museum, academia, art history, an art critical establishment. The Casablanca school created all of that, in addition to being an incredible pedagogic hub. They created makeshift museums, makeshift streets displays, makeshift magazines, makeshift assemblies, and even delegations. That's why they're so impressive and that's why they're so compelling.”
Many of the works at Tate St Ives are being exhibited to the public for the first time in years, and the show draws on a decade of research by Montazami, who first started looking into the school when he was a curator at Tate in the 2010s.
It features work by the Casablanca trio – Belkahia, Melehi, and Chabaa – as well as 19 others: artists who also taught at the school, such as Andre Elbaz; students, such as Houssein Miloudi and Mustapha Hafid; and European artists who worked in Casablanca at the time. The result is a vision of Casablanca as a much more networked site than conventional histories have it, and much more diverse in terms of artwork and artists.
Though it is well-known that Belkahia discarded canvas for vellum, he also worked in copper – a common material for Moroccan artistry – which he beat into quasi-calligraphic forms and stick-like figures. Chabaa, too, carved versions of his geometric experiments into wood, in reliefs and intricate, even claustrophobic sculptures.
In the work of the student Hafid, the circular forms of Amazigh motifs are ripped into the canvas. Strange little ceramics by Abderrahman Rahoule, who exhibited with Hafid at the 1968 student exhibition, resemble towers designed for circulating water or air, or a city flowing out into everything around it.
There were also a number of visiting European artists, demonstrating the extent of the school's influence. Bert Flint, a Dutch anthropologist, was Melehi’s co-traveller on his road trip across the High Atlas mountains.
Installed opposite an Amazigh carpet is an extraordinary textile work by the Polish artist Anna Draus-Hafid, who met Hafid on an exchange programme in Warsaw (Morocco looked to the USSR for support at the time). The pair married and returned to Casablanca, splitting their time between the two countries.
This is the first time the work has been shown publicly and suggests a connection between Moroccan textiles and Eastern European experiments of the same time, with Draus-Hafid even setting up a tapestry workshop at the school.
Montazami and Jackson also explore the work of Chabaa and Melehi, with its nods to New York's hard-edged abstraction – again rounding them out with paintings by lesser-known artists, such as Malika Agueznay and Mohamed Ataallah, and the superb works of Abdelkrim Ghattas, in which rigid order seems to fracture into joy before one's very eyes.
They also include documentary material from Chabaa and Melee’s experiments with Souffles and Integral, the two journals in which the artists developed postcolonial ideas as political and theoretical projects – a crucial part of the Casablanca project, which can only be understood through the artworks on show.
"All of them had a drive or a strategy, which could be collective and shared or even individual, to deconstruct and get rid of the easel painting model," says Montazami.
"It was theorised by Mohammed Chabaa, because Chabaa was really a theoretician. He's the first art theorist in Morocco. He began to write exhibition reviews and art theory since the 50s, and [alongside the 1966 Rabat exhibition] he published an important text in the Moroccan press about how to escape the easel-painting and how to be modern."
To emphasise the importance of the infrastructure that the Casablanca school created, the curators have organised the exhibition via four major exhibitions, restaging them as far as possible.
This includes the famous Presence Plastique exhibition in Jemaa el-Fna Square in 1969, in which the artists showed their work on the streets of Marrakesh. The show features work by all the exhibitors – Belkahia, Melehi, and Chabaa, plus Ataallah, Hafid and Mohamed Hamidi – as well the newly uncovered venues for the show. It travelled to 16 November Square in Casablanca a week after opening in Marrakesh, and then featured at two girls’ schools in the city, allowing the artists to further take their work out of the gallery and into the space of daily Moroccan life.
Other rooms show the connection of the Casablanca School to postcolonial movements across the Arab world, such as the 1974 Baghdad Biennial, another high-water mark for Arab contemporary art, when the different scenes that had developed in each postcolonial context converged and were exhibited together.
Belkahia curated the Moroccan delegation of 12 artists with his own work and Chabaa’s graphic experiments, as well as messier, painterly works by Miloud Labied and Saad ben Cheffaj.
The exhibition finishes on the Asilah festival, created in 1978 by Melehi and Mohamed Benaissa in the northern coastal town. There, again, they integrated artwork into daily life, working with local communities to paint the city's white walls in striking shades of blues, yellows and greens, and acting as a meeting point for artists across the Global South.
As a closing chapter for the show, it's an apt one. The lines of influence for the Casablanca school extend broadly – and then abruptly close off. Mired in the political trouble of Morocco in the 1980s and 90s, and ignored by a western-facing art world, the sphere of influence of the Casablanca school artists retreated inwards and only now reappear.
The Casablanca Art School is at Tate St Ives, Cornwall, until 14 January 2024
England 12-man squad for second Test
v West Indies which starts Thursday: Rory Burns, Joe Denly, Jonny Bairstow, Joe Root (captain), Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Moeen Ali, Ben Foakes, Sam Curran, Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson, Jack Leach
THE SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre, four-cylinder turbo
Transmission: seven-speed dual clutch automatic
Power: 169bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Price: Dh54,500
On sale: now
Overall standings
1. Christopher Froome (GBR/Sky) 68hr 18min 36sec,
2. Fabio Aru (ITA/AST) at 0:18.
3. Romain Bardet (FRA/ALM) 0:23.
4. Rigoberto Uran (COL/CAN) 0:29.
5. Mikel Landa (ESP/SKY) 1:17.
How the UAE gratuity payment is calculated now
Employees leaving an organisation are entitled to an end-of-service gratuity after completing at least one year of service.
The tenure is calculated on the number of days worked and does not include lengthy leave periods, such as a sabbatical. If you have worked for a company between one and five years, you are paid 21 days of pay based on your final basic salary. After five years, however, you are entitled to 30 days of pay. The total lump sum you receive is based on the duration of your employment.
1. For those who have worked between one and five years, on a basic salary of Dh10,000 (calculation based on 30 days):
a. Dh10,000 ÷ 30 = Dh333.33. Your daily wage is Dh333.33
b. Dh333.33 x 21 = Dh7,000. So 21 days salary equates to Dh7,000 in gratuity entitlement for each year of service. Multiply this figure for every year of service up to five years.
2. For those who have worked more than five years
c. 333.33 x 30 = Dh10,000. So 30 days’ salary is Dh10,000 in gratuity entitlement for each year of service.
Note: The maximum figure cannot exceed two years total salary figure.
23-man shortlist for next six Hall of Fame inductees
Tony Adams, David Beckham, Dennis Bergkamp, Sol Campbell, Eric Cantona, Andrew Cole, Ashley Cole, Didier Drogba, Les Ferdinand, Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, Roy Keane, Frank Lampard, Matt Le Tissier, Michael Owen, Peter Schmeichel, Paul Scholes, John Terry, Robin van Persie, Nemanja Vidic, Patrick Viera, Ian Wright.
2.0
Director: S Shankar
Producer: Lyca Productions; presented by Dharma Films
Cast: Rajnikanth, Akshay Kumar, Amy Jackson, Sudhanshu Pandey
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EFirst%20round%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3Cbr%3EEmmanuel%20Macron%3A%2051.1%25%3Cbr%3EFrancois%20Fillon%3A%2024.2%25%3Cbr%3EJean-Luc%20Melenchon%3A%2011.8%25%3Cbr%3EBenoit%20Hamon%3A%207.0%25%3Cbr%3EMarine%20Le%20Pen%3A%202.9%25%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESecond%20round%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3Cbr%3EEmmanuel%20Macron%3A%2095.1%25%3Cbr%3EMarine%20Le%20Pen%3A%204.9%25%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
THE%20STRANGERS'%20CASE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%20Brandt%20Andersen%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EOmar%20Sy%2C%20Jason%20Beghe%2C%20Angeliki%20Papoulia%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
German plea
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the German parliament that. Russia had erected a new wall across Europe.
"It's not a Berlin Wall -- it is a Wall in central Europe between freedom and bondage and this Wall is growing bigger with every bomb" dropped on Ukraine, Zelenskyy told MPs.
Mr Zelenskyy was applauded by MPs in the Bundestag as he addressed Chancellor Olaf Scholz directly.
"Dear Mr Scholz, tear down this Wall," he said, evoking US President Ronald Reagan's 1987 appeal to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
RACECARD
4.30pm Jebel Jais – Maiden (PA) Dh60,000 (Turf) 1,000m
5pm: Jabel Faya – Maiden (PA) Dh60,000 (T) 1,000m
5.30pm: Al Wathba Stallions Cup – Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 (T) 2,200m
6pm: The President’s Cup Prep – Conditions (PA) Dh100,000 (T) 2,200m
6.30pm: Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club – Prestige (PA) Dh125,000 (T) 1,600m
7pm: Al Ruwais – Group 3 (PA) Dh300,000 (T) 1,200m
7.30pm: Jebel Hafeet – Maiden (TB) Dh80,000 (T) 1,400m
UAE'S%20YOUNG%20GUNS
%3Cp%3E1%20Esha%20Oza%2C%20age%2026%2C%2079%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E2%20Theertha%20Satish%2C%20age%2020%2C%2066%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E3%20Khushi%20Sharma%2C%20age%2021%2C%2065%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E4%20Kavisha%20Kumari%2C%20age%2021%2C%2079%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E5%20Heena%20Hotchandani%2C%20age%2023%2C%2016%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E6%20Rinitha%20Rajith%2C%20age%2018%2C%2034%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E7%20Samaira%20Dharnidharka%2C%20age%2017%2C%2053%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E8%20Vaishnave%20Mahesh%2C%20age%2017%2C%2068%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E9%20Lavanya%20Keny%2C%20age%2017%2C%2033%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E10%20Siya%20Gokhale%2C%20age%2018%2C%2033%20matches%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E11%20Indhuja%20Nandakumar%2C%20age%2018%2C%2046%20matches%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
MATCH INFO
Day 2 at Mount Maunganui
England 353
Stokes 91, Denly 74, Southee 4-88
New Zealand 144-4
Williamson 51, S Curran 2-28
PROFILE BOX
Company name: Overwrite.ai
Founder: Ayman Alashkar
Started: Established in 2020
Based: Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai
Sector: PropTech
Initial investment: Self-funded by founder
Funding stage: Seed funding, in talks with angel investors
More on animal trafficking
Florence and the Machine – High as Hope
Three stars
MATCH INFO
Delhi Daredevils 174-4 (20 ovs)
Mumbai Indians 163 (19.3 ovs)
Delhi won the match by 11 runs
The years Ramadan fell in May
The biog
Hobbies: Writing and running
Favourite sport: beach volleyball
Favourite holiday destinations: Turkey and Puerto Rico
INDIA%20SQUAD
%3Cp%3ERohit%20Sharma%20(capt)%2C%20Shubman%20Gill%2C%20Cheteshwar%20Pujara%2C%20Virat%20Kohli%2C%20Ajinkya%20Rahane%2C%20KL%20Rahul%2C%20KS%20Bharat%20(wk)%2C%20Ravichandran%20Ashwin%2C%20Ravindra%20Jadeja%2C%20Axar%20Patel%2C%20Shardul%20Thakur%2C%20Mohammed%20Shami%2C%20Mohammed%20Siraj%2C%20Umesh%20Yadav%2C%20Jaydev%20Unadkat%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Name: Peter Dicce
Title: Assistant dean of students and director of athletics
Favourite sport: soccer
Favourite team: Bayern Munich
Favourite player: Franz Beckenbauer
Favourite activity in Abu Dhabi: scuba diving in the Northern Emirates
Fast%20X
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Louis%20Leterrier%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Vin%20Diesel%2C%20Michelle%20Rodriguez%2C%20Jason%20Statham%2C%20Tyrese%20Gibson%2C%20Ludacris%2C%20Jason%20Momoa%2C%20John%20Cena%2C%20Jordana%20Brewster%2C%20Nathalie%20Emmanuel%2C%20Sung%20Kang%2C%20Brie%20Larson%2C%20Helen%20Mirren%20and%20Charlize%20Theron%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Fight card
Preliminaries:
Nouredine Samir (UAE) v Sheroz Kholmirzav (UZB); Lucas Porst (SWE) v Ellis Barboza (GBR); Mouhmad Amine Alharar (MAR) v Mohammed Mardi (UAE); Ibrahim Bilal (UAE) v Spyro Besiri (GRE); Aslamjan Ortikov (UZB) v Joshua Ridgwell (GBR)
Main card:
Carlos Prates (BRA) v Dmitry Valent (BLR); Bobirjon Tagiev (UZB) v Valentin Thibaut (FRA); Arthur Meyer (FRA) v Hicham Moujtahid (BEL); Ines Es Salehy (BEL) v Myriame Djedidi (FRA); Craig Coakley (IRE) v Deniz Demirkapu (TUR); Artem Avanesov (ARM) v Badreddine Attif (MAR); Abdulvosid Buranov (RUS) v Akram Hamidi (FRA)
Title card:
Intercontinental Lightweight: Ilyass Habibali (UAE) v Angel Marquez (ESP)
Intercontinental Middleweight: Amine El Moatassime (UAE) v Francesco Iadanza (ITA)
Asian Featherweight: Zakaria El Jamari (UAE) v Phillip Delarmino (PHI)
Day 1 results:
Open Men (bonus points in brackets)
New Zealand 125 (1) beat UAE 111 (3)
India 111 (4) beat Singapore 75 (0)
South Africa 66 (2) beat Sri Lanka 57 (2)
Australia 126 (4) beat Malaysia -16 (0)
Open Women
New Zealand 64 (2) beat South Africa 57 (2)
England 69 (3) beat UAE 63 (1)
Australia 124 (4) beat UAE 23 (0)
New Zealand 74 (2) beat England 55 (2)
Zidane's managerial achievements
La Liga: 2016/17
Spanish Super Cup: 2017
Uefa Champions League: 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18
Uefa Super Cup: 2016, 2017
Fifa Club World Cup: 2016, 2017
'How To Build A Boat'
Jonathan Gornall, Simon & Schuster
Bio
Age: 25
Town: Al Diqdaqah – Ras Al Khaimah
Education: Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering
Favourite colour: White
Favourite place in the UAE: Downtown Dubai
Favourite book: A Life in Administration by Ghazi Al Gosaibi.
First owned baking book: How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson.
The biog
Hometown: Birchgrove, Sydney Australia
Age: 59
Favourite TV series: Outlander Netflix series
Favourite place in the UAE: Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque / desert / Louvre Abu Dhabi
Favourite book: Father of our Nation: Collected Quotes of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan
Thing you will miss most about the UAE: My friends and family, Formula 1, having Friday's off, desert adventures, and Arabic culture and people
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
