The Art Explora Festival and its museum boat to stopover in Tangier and Rabat in the 2024 Autumn
by Art Explora Festival 6 Aug 2024 04:29 PDT
20-29 September & 11-17 October 2024
Art Explora Festival © Valentin Popineau et Adrien Chupeau
The Art Explora Festival, a free, travelling cultural festival that will sail around the Mediterranean until 2026, will stop over in Tangier from 20 to 29 September and in Rabat from 11 to 17 October in collaboration with curator Laila Hida, assisted by Inès Yahiaoui, and in partnership with Le 18, a multidisciplinary cultural venue based in Marrakech.
The festival will take place on board the museum boat with a welcoming capacity of up to 2000 visitors a day with immersive experiences in partnership with the Louvre Museum and Ircam x Centre Pompidou, as well as quayside in exhibition pavilions designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte and outside the museum walls in a range of venues in the host cities.
Sharing the arts and culture
The Art Explora Festival, an Art Explora Foundation initiative, is a museum boat and its travelling festival sailing across the world's seas and oceans to bring visitors innovative artistic and cultural experiences free of charge. This first-ever adventure reflects the Art Explora Foundation's goal to promote increasingly widespread and inclusive access to the arts.
After its first successful stopovers in Malta and Venice, the festival and its museum boat were officially inaugurated during a major port-of-call in Marseille in June, hosting nearly 60,000 visitors. Through to the Autumn of 2026, the festival will visit a total of 20 ports in 15 countries around the Mediterranean, providing artists, exhibition curators, institutions, non-profits and NGOs the opportunity to reach out to all audiences around a festival whose content is rooted in the heritage and issues of each country visited.
Collectively, they will imagine a new vision of the Mediterranean - a cradle of great civilisations and a melting pot of many cultures.
The world's first museum boat
The year 2024 marks the "kick-off" year for Art Explora's one-of-akind travelling festival, held at sea - on a museum boat designed by Axel de Beaufort and Guillaume Verdier - and on land - in a village with exhibition pavilions created by Jean-Michel Wilmotte.
The remarkably large-size museum boat measuring 47 metres in length, 18 metres in width and a 55-metre mast with sails designed by artist Laure Prouvost bearing a universal, unifying message. A symbol of escape and discovery, boats hold a unique component of adventure and imagination. Sailing from port to port - places of trade par excellence, the catamaran will connect worlds, cultures and people.
"Artistic creation and mobility are powerful levers for shifting people's perspectives and sharing images or stories that forge other relationships with the world. Climbing on board a boat is an experience in and of itself and it will become even more memorable when discovering unique cultural and artistic works on board and quayside." - Frédéric JOUSSET, Art Explora Founder & President.
"Art Explora's multidisciplinary festival is a daring, innovative proposal that challenges conventional formats for presenting and representing art. Through the immersive experience on the boat as well as the communal area in the exhibition village, it is a natural call for investing the central stage with forms of artistic expression related to popular and vernacular traditions that characterise many cultures around the Mediterranean." - Laila HIDA, Curator of the Moroccan ports of call
"We're proud to pursue our support for Art Explora's next port-of-call in Morocco - a land of culture and hospitality - and a key market for Accor. Via this partnership, Accor is renewing its commitment to making culture accessible to all and to working as closely as possible with local communities, by getting all its local partners and employees involved." - Patrick MENDES, CEO Accor Europe & North Africa - Premium, Midscale & Econom
Art Explora Festival Programme in Tangier and Rabat
Taking place on board the museum boat and quayside in the exhibition pavilions and friendly, welcoming areas as well as in a range of venues in the heart of the host cities, with a programme of events combining exhibitions, virtual reality experiences, performances, lectures, films screenings and concerts, etc.
The programme will include 3 parts:
- Exhibitions aboard the museum boat (in both Tangier and Rabat)
- Exhibitions in the quayside pavilions (only in Tangier)
- Live programme created in collaboration with curator Laila Hida, which may take place on the Agora - the central stage set up quayside, or in various venues around the city (in both Tangier and Rabat)
1. Aboard the museum boat
The immersive exhibition "Présentes " produced with the Louvre Museum's outstanding collaboration, highlighting female figures in Mediterranean civilisations. A two-part experience with a documentary film to be viewed on the aft deck and an immersive experience inside the museum boat. The Mediterranean soundscape designed by Ircam x Centre Pompidou to explore on the upper deck.
2. In the Quayside Exhibition Pavilions
Central Pavilion with the exhibition "Under the Azure" draws inspiration from the evocative power of the Mediterranean sea, the myths that surround it, the creatures that inhabit it and the visions it conjures.
Artists include: Etel Adnan, Jean-Marie Appriou, Baya, Asli Savusoglu, Aly Cissé, Simone Fattal, Simone Fattal, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Edi Hila, Marguerite Humeau, Aboubacar Kanté, Yannis Maniatakos, Marisa Merz, Joan Miró, Lydia Ourahmane, Jean Painlevé, Anri Sala, Emilija Škarnulyte, Soundwalk Collective, Adrián Villar Rojas, Sidy Wague, Dominique White, Luigi Zuccheri
Curator: Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
Associate curator: Blanche de Lestrange, Artistic Director - Art Explora Foundation
Photo Pavilion: Moving Images in the Arab world featuring the exhibition "Undertow" that focuses on issues of hospitality, migration and exile, through the works of established and emerging photographers and videographers.
Artists include: Majd Abdel Hamid, Mounira Al Solh, Younes Ben Slimane, Catherine Cattaruzza, Imane Djamil, Badr El Hammami, Sirine Fattouh, Nabila Halim, Bouchra Khalili, Hiwa K., Sara Kontar, Randa Maroufi, Valentin Noujaïm, Walid Raad, Sara Sadik, Firas Shehade, Rania Stephan, Lara Tabet, Akram Zaatari
Curators: Amanda Abi Khalil & Danielle Makhoul
Virtual Reality Pavillon featuring a selection of the best virtual reality experiences produced for the most part in the Mediterranean Basin and dealing with themes spanning the Art Explora Festival's whole itinerary:
- Mediterranean Wonders: explore the Golden Age of Venice, Athens and Alexandria, by Ubisoft
- Age-old Cities: A Virtual Journey from Palmyra to Mosul by Ubisoft
- Barra Off-Site: estore the Sahab Imaginary Museum's archives by the HAWAF collective
- (Hi)story of a painting: immersion in the life and work of Artmesia Gentileschi, by Quentin Darras & Gaëlle Mourre
- Meet Mortaza: a young Afghan's exile in search of freedom, by Joséphine Derobe
- L'île des Morts (Isle of the Dead): a timeless journey guided by the mythical figure of Charon, by Benjamin Nuel
- À l'Aube de l'Art (The Dawn of Art): on the path of mankind's first-ever masterpiece by Pierre Zandrowicz
3. Live events
The ports of call in Tangier and Rabat are the opportunity to host a lively, multidisciplinary programme of events with performances, concerts, film screenings, dance, workshops and talks, free of charge and open to all.
The artistic programme developed with curator Laila Hida captures the theme of Myth in contemporary societies. The mythologies are historical or imaginary narratives that have been shared, passed on and told, inextricably linked to the territories they talk about and the people who bring them alive.
This event will be rolled out with an emphasis placed on discussions, encounters and hospitality within the quayside village and in various venues in Tangier and then Rabat/Sal. to broaden the narrative's scope by reaching out to audiences through a festive, communal and participative approach.
Projects chosen for the programme have a local focus and also explore Mediterranean and African specialities. They will take up quarters in the exhibition village in Tangier near the old port, then in Rabat along the Bouregreg River, with workshops, activities, performances and talks.
The performative, ephemeral aspect of the events is reminiscent of a performing ring or halka - common in North African performative and theatrical folk traditions - set up and taken down every evening, only to be re-invented the next day.
A festival for all
Audience engagement is a major challenge for the Art Explora Festival, which provides access and participation modes facilitating key encounters between art, artists and audiences.
Outreach initiatives, created in collaboration with Mediaction Culturelle, are adapted to all audiences, combining human and digital tools. Over 2000 children from primary and middle schools as well as not-for-profit social organisations will be welcomed for guided tours in Tangier and Rabat. Outreach initiatives will include artist-led workshops and awarenessraising about contemporary issues in the Mediterranean, as well as tours beyond the museum walls to discover the cultural history and urban design of each port of call.
In Tangier and Rabat, tours and workshops with schools and non-profits will be scheduled every weekday morning.
At weekends, multidisciplinary workshops will be held for the general public, with the first weekend devoted to workshops aimed at raising awareness about environmental issues and exploring good practices to adopt on a day-to-day basis.
The following organisations and non-profits will take part in these workshops:
- Association Al Mouassat Rabat
- Académie Régionale de l'éducation et de la Formation Tangier - Tétouan - Al Hoceima
- Union des Associations pour le Handicap Tangier - Tétouan
- Académie Régionale de l'Education et de la Formation Rabat - Salé - Kénitra
Cross-Border Residencies in the Mediterranean:
As part of the festival, the Art Explora Foundation and The Island Club have initiated a programme of cross-border residences providing an opportunity for the artists selected by the Festival's curators to be welcomed from host-city to hostcity and to support them in developing a project related to the social, cultural and ecological issues in the Mediterranean, with the aim of creating a long-term and interdependent network of partner residencies.
In Tangier, the Art Explora Foundation has joined forces with Think Tanger, a cultural platform that explores and experiments with social and spatial issues related to the urban development of the city of Tangier through programmes at the crossroads of different practices: visual arts, design, graphic arts, participatory research and urban practices. Think Tanger will be hosting an artistic residence for the duo Carmen Yruela Baena and Juan Gallego Benot (Spain).
Their month-long residency in Tangier will be an opportunity to explore the cultural heritage common to southern Spain and northern Morocco, and the influence of traditional Arabic music and Hispano-Arabic poetry on the development of flamenco as a musical form.
Carmen Yruela (Sevilla, 1998) is a singer and flamenco singing teacher at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Jaén (Spain). Her artistic career began when she was seventeen, singing in Seville's flamenco venues known as tablaos and peñas. Since then, she has developed her technique blending traditional and more contemporary forms. Her interdisciplinarity and mixed approaches make her one of the key figures in the young generation who are reforming flamenco singing in Spain, with an international outlook.
Juan Gallego Benot (Sevilla, 1997) is a writer, doctoral student and contemporary art critic for the newspaper El País. He is the author of the poetry collections Oración, en el huerto (II Premio Poesía Tino Barriuso, Hiperión 2020) and Las Cañadas, oscuras (Letraversal, 2023). His university research focuses on rhetoric and modernity, and he is currently working as a lecturer at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the University of Groningen (UG) in the Netherlands. His poems were set to music by Iñaki Estrada in a play of the same name performed in Miranda de Ebro, Spain (2021) and in Tokyo (2021).
For more information: www.artexplora.org/festival