Where to See Contemporary Art in Casablanca: Galleries and Essential Venues
A tour of contemporary art galleries in Casablanca — exhibition venues, institutions and spaces that keep the Moroccan art scene alive.
Over the decades, Casablanca has established itself as one of the nerve centres of Moroccan contemporary art. The city that gave birth to the Casablanca School in the 1960s continues today to host a remarkably diverse fabric of galleries and exhibition spaces, between historic venues and more recent initiatives.
Among the city's most active contemporary art galleries, La Galerie 38 holds a special place in my journey: it was there that the "Lumière Sacrée" exhibition was presented in 2022, a turning point in my practice toward light as material. The gallery, which also has a space in Geneva, supports a group of contemporary Moroccan artists with an eye toward international recognition, while maintaining a strong anchoring in Casablanca.
L'Atelier 21 is another essential landmark of the Casablanca scene. Founded long ago, this space has hosted several of my solo and group exhibitions, including "Lignes Sans Brides" and "Langues de Bois — Al-Lawh al-Mahfoûdh," with a programme that has always brought generations of Moroccan artists into dialogue.
Beyond private galleries, the Villa des Arts, driven by the Al Mada Foundation, plays a major institutional role in the diffusion of contemporary art in Casablanca, through group exhibitions and programmes such as Festiv'Art. Société Générale's art space rounds out this landscape with regular programming open to the local scene.
This density of exhibition venues in Casablanca is no accident: it reflects a Moroccan art scene in full effervescence, where galleries act as a bridge between local production and international fairs — 1-54, Abu Dhabi Art, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair — which today give Moroccan artists worldwide visibility. For an art lover wishing to discover the Moroccan art scene, these galleries are the most reliable entry point.
Visiting Casablanca's galleries is, finally, a way to take stock of a continuity: that of a founding generation — Belkahia, Melehi, Hamidi — whose legacy still runs through the work of younger artists today, in a constant dialogue between memory and contemporaneity. I return to this at greater length in our article on the Casablanca School.
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