The controversy over the Moroccan national pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, in which the three artists and curators were abruptly replaced in January, has taken another twist: the country will not have a national pavilion at all.
It started as a good-news story for the North African country. In July the ministry of culture of Morocco announced the country would participate with a national pavilion for the first time. The artist and writer Mahi Binebine was appointed curator, and he commissioned three artists to participate: Majida Khattari, Safaa Erruas and Fatiha Zemmouri.
Majida Khattari is one of the Moroccan artists who had created work for Venice © Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images
The artists were working on their pieces towards a deadline of 11 January, but in November, they heard from Mohamed Ben Yacoub, the director of arts at the ministry of culture that there were difficulties in the approval process for the independent foundation that was to be set up to oversee the pavilion.
Then, in mid-January, just after the artists finished their projects for the exhibition, the ministry of culture told them that they would no longer be representing Morocco at the Venice Biennale.“I had made the installation and was told: you are no longer exhibiting. I was absolutely shocked,” Erruas says.
A news report in Le Monde stated that Mouna Mekouar, a Moroccan curator based in Paris, would be the curator instead. However, the Venice Biennale has now confirmed that there is no official pavilion for Morocco.
Erruas says that the ministry has promised to reimburse the artists for their expenses on producing their work, and that it would stage an exhibition of it at some point in the future.
Neither Mekouar nor the ministry responded to requests for comment from The Art Newspaper for clarification, and it remains unclear why the exhibition was cancelled.