For its sixth edition, held on Sunday, September 13, the art tour took place at various historic sites, with a focus on performance art.
By Olivier Rachet
On a smaller scale than previous editions, the latest installment of the “Être ici” festival had to cope with the last-minute withdrawal of “longtime” sponsors, undermining an event kept afloat by a dedicated team of volunteers. By taking over renovated or dilapidated venues usually closed to the public, the event offered an enticing Sunday stroll. While the presentations at the Tour du Ciel and the Tour Catherine in the medina may have been disappointing, at the Hammam Franco, the dialogue between Khadija El Abyad and the Franco-Iranian artist Saena Delacroix-Sadighiyan hit the mark. The use of henna in their respective works—in the form of paintings and a calligraphic performance—subtly celebrated the intimacy of the female body; Saena Delacroix-Sadighiyan dedicated her work to Jina Mahsa Amini, whose tragic death had sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran.
Another highlight of the tour, the Dar Dmana residence featured two equally striking performances. The audience was captivated by Thomas Henriot’s focus as he spent 10 hours drawing the building’s patio, which, through his eyes, was transformed into a music room with surreal and fantastical perspectives. More intense, choreographer Olivier Dubois’s performance seemed to give form to tortured figures straight out of a Bacon painting. It was hard not to think of the daily tragedies of migration in the Mediterranean, which other artists addressed—though without a curatorial vision to structure the overall presentation. Thus, at the Palais Akaaboune, the project “Se déplacer” by Safaa Erruas, Christine Ferrer, and Alejandra González Soca—which blended embroidery, video, and installation—could have been a response to the sound installation by Youssef El Idrissi and George Ka at the Hôtel Liberté, dedicated to the songs of migratory birds from the Strait, prey to birds of prey.
Mixed Proposals
A must-see stop on this year’s festival, the former Hôtel Liberté—located across from the legendary Hôtel El Minzah—hosted about fifteen works of very mixed quality. It’s clear that simply placing artworks in an “artistic wasteland” isn’t enough to make them shine. A few pieces, however, stood out from the crowd. Amina Rezki breathed new life into the spirits of the place, by complementing her beautifully expressive portraits with two installations, one of which featured a stone sculpture depicting a heavy face with reddened eyelids—reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico’s world—beneath which a goldfish swam desperately in circles inside a bowl.
The painter Abdellah Khairouni, for his part, brought the Tangier of the Beat Generation back to life, while Mohamed Saïd Chair presented an oil-on-canvas painting that made compelling use of lightin which the Tangier Cinematheque is portrayed as a desolate place inhabited by four depressed teenagers, searching for a horizon that is hopelessly blocked. Although the heat was oppressive that day, a persistent mist seemed to haunt the often spectral works, much like Anne Mocaër’s apocalyptic photographs from her series *Quand le soleil s’arrête* (*When the Sun Stops*).
