ABU DHABI ART 2025 | MODERN CONTINUITIES: DIALOGUES FROM MOROCCO

Loft Art Gallery participates in Abu Dhabi Art 2025 with Modern Continuities: Dialogues from Morocco, a group presentation bringing together six Moroccan artists whose practices reflect the richness and diversity of contemporary creation while engaging deeply with the country’s artistic heritage.

From Mohamed Melehi, a founding figure of Moroccan modernism, and Malika Agueznay, the country’s first woman modernist and a member of the experimental Casablanca Art School, to the contemporary explorations of Khadija El Abyad, Nassim Azarzar, Samy Snoussi and Amina Agueznay who will be the artist of the first Moroccan pavilion at the Venice Art biennale next year, the presentation traces lines of continuity between generations.

Together, their works chart a living dialogue between memory and contemporaneity - where cultural inheritance becomes a site of experimentation, and Moroccan identity is reimagined through evolving materials, symbols, and forms. An emblematic figure of Moroccan modernism and founder of the Casablanca Art School

Mohamed Melehi (1936–2020) pioneered a universal visual language rooted in local aesthetics. His wave motif, radiant colours, and rhythmic abstraction continue to influence new generations, symbolising the dynamism of post-independence Morocco.Malika Agueznay (b. 1938), a visual artist and pioneer of Moroccan modernism, is recognised as the country’s first woman modernist and a leading member of the Casablanca Art School. Her abstract compositions merge natural and symbolic forms, often inspired by the ocean and vegetal motifs, translating Morocco’s landscape and spiritual heritage into lyrical, rhythmic geometries.

Amina Agueznay (b. 1963), trained as an architect, extends this lineage through an engagement with organic materials, weaving, and collective craft practices. Her sculptural works reinterpret Amazigh and textile traditions through conceptual and architectural gestures that explore rhythm, impermanence, and transformation. In 2026, Amina Aguezna will represent Morocco at its first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale, a historic milestone underscoring her role in shaping Morocco’s contemporary art discourse on an

international stage.

Working with fibre, thread, and hair, Khadija El Abyad (b. 1991) explores the intimacy of materials historically tied to feminine labour. Her delicate and meditative works transform gestures of weaving and sewing into reflections on identity, embodiment, and the metaphysics

of care, bridging craft and contemporary abstraction. 

Nassim Azarzar (b. 1989) draws from Morocco’s truck culture and everyday iconography, transforming popular motifs into painterly and sculptural forms that question social codes, masculinity, and collective belonging. His visual language fuses geometry and ornamentation,

merging the vernacular and the poetic.

Through layered compositions and symbolic architectures, Samy Snoussi (b. 1989) examines urban space as a repository of collective memory. His practice moves between figuration and abstraction, exploring how signs, texts, and spatial forms articulate identity and imagination in contemporary Morocco.