Biennale |

For the Educational Programme of the Marrakech Biennale, French artists POES and JO BER just completed the largest mural in a mixed school in Morocco, painting a monumental 360 sq meters.

For the past four years, Ryane Abdelmouhcine, Headmaster of Tariq Ben Ziad, the largest mixed college of Marrakech with 2200 children, always been creative to motivate and inspire his pupils, hence the numerous sport trophies won by his children during his tenure. He got in touch with Abdelhamid Bousaadi from the Marrakech Biennale to express his vision and how his school could be involved during the Biennale. Together with the funding of the MONTRESSO* ART FOUNDATION and the support of Hanaf and Colorado, this extraordinary project came to light.

Poes & Jo Ber Mural - The Game of Life

POES and JO BER worked together to create a revisited version of the infamous board game “The game of Life” created by Milton Bradley in 1861 and popular in the 90s.

The monumental artwork is designed to look like a video game. The Master of the game with robotic features invites the children in a playful world, with joyful characters and colourful experience. The adventure of Life goes through different seasons, starting in the spring with a growing tree of knowledge. The summer will be the time to escape and relax. The arrival of autumn reveals stairs, levels where they can gain additional knowledge. As winter comes, so does the snow and the urge to reach for the stars, and become a cosmonaut!

Through the seasons and cycle of life, artists POES and JO BER deeply desire to provide children of the college Tarik Ibn Ziad a joyful and creative vision of life based on knowledge.

Poes & Jo Ber Mural - The Game of Life

Sign of cultural openness and that the pupils aspirations and ambitions are supported, regardless of their background and gender, this one of a kind project is already the delight and pride of the boys and girls of the college Tariq Ben Ziad as they pose in front of it.

In parallel both artists POES and JO BER have been working with 30 pupils to create a collaborative 2 x 10 meters within the school.

View the full set of pics here

The ‘Game of Life’ mural by POES and JO BER is visible at the college Tarik Ibn Ziad,
rue El Bouraz, district M’Hamid in Marrakech.

Photo credit: Butterfly / Paul Etard / POES

Marrakech Biennale

Presided by Vanessa Branson and curated by Reem FADDA, the sixth edition of the Marrakech Biennale is a festival with the mission to build bridges between the cultures through the arts, inspiring outstanding artists from all over the world to create work that responds to the magical environment of Marrakech.

Concentrated within Marrakech’s central historical sites of the El Bahia and El Badii palaces, Dar Si Saïd museum, Menara Pavilion, and Koutoubia Mosque and its surrounding minaret and cistern, the Marrakech Biennale offers visitors an immervise experience between the historical sites, the souks within the Medina and the contemporary art installations.

Marrakech Biennale

The Palais de Bahia is displaying works by the late Farid Belkahia, an artist who spent nearly his entire life in Marrakech (1934-2014). Belkahia studied and worked in Europe for several years, but eventually returned to the region, where he headed the School of Fine Art in Casablanca in the early ’60s and created abstracted pieces from rich materials resembling the Moroccan earth (wax, copper, tanned leathers), effectively replacing the European expressionists’ canvases with the organic.

Marrakech Biennale

The installation by Oscar Murillo entitled through patches of wheat, corn and mud exemplifies the artist’s ability to move across mediums, spanning painting to sculpture and interactive installation. The public is here called directly into the artwork through being able to handle large-size artworks, mainly paintings, of modest appearance.
By removing the taboo of touch and using humble and disposable, materials, the artist questions the aura and statute of the work of art and develops a new role for it in the viewer’s physical space.

Fatiha Zemmouri presents an installation at the Palais El Badii entitled À l’abri… de rien (Sheltered… From Nothing). A massive, meteor-like rock made of polystyrene and plaster appears wedged between two walls at the end of a narrow corridor.
Hovering overhead, while it recalls a ancient history and geological time, the viewer’s awareness is focussed towards a potential daunting outcome.

Colourful paintings by Moroccan artist Mohammed Chabâa, part of the radical Casablanca School of Fine Arts (mostly active in the 1960s and ’70s) also adorn the rooms to historical palaces.

View the full set of pics here

Stay tuned for the rest of our coverage where we visit the Rancinan extraodinary exhibition, the OFF and the Street Art projects of the Marrakech Biennale.

Marrakech Biennale
Until 6 May 2016
Morocco