A “responsible, innovative and critical” artist with an extraordinary back story, as instigator and eye witness to the globalization of contemporary Arab art since the 1980s, Mohammed Kacimi is the subject of a major exhibition at the Mucem.

Mohammed Kacimi is undoubtedly one of the most important Moroccan visual artists since the Second World War. From a classical, linear tradition to the developments of new forms of modernity that feed the Arab and European art scenes today and that mix and mingle together, “go-betweens” like Kacimi can be found all over the Mediterranean, who are now identifiable with the slight historical perspective that we have gained over the years.
“We are undergoing a sort of break between latent modernity and persistent tradition”, he concluded at the end of a long interview with Abdellatif Laâbi. This was something he had to experience for himself – opening doors, testing them, and then closing them again or incorporating them into his work – in order to reach deep down inside himself to the culture of his continent and the new freedoms afforded to him by African art.

This exhibition is part of a strategy launched by the Mucem to include Mediterranean artists chosen for the decisive roles they played to enable the generations to come to skip ahead to a new, universal contemporaneity fuelled by cultural roots. In addition to what the call of Africa represented for the artist from an essential, liberating standpoint, the exhibition also highlights the inspiration with which Mohammed Kacimi, his modernity, the construction of his freedom and his artistic uniqueness, led to a notable transition in Mediterranean art.