Farid Belkahia or Art at Liberty

Farid Belkahia is one of the pioneers of contemporary art in the Maghreb. Beginning in the 1960s, he focused his attention on new ways of self-expression, examining his own identity and relationship with the “other.”

Belkahia abandoned the practice of traditional painting to research with copper, which he hammers, burns and oxidizes in order to achieve emblematic traces, undulations, and flexible, rhythmic bas-relief effects.

Advocating complete creative freedom in perpetual reconquest, he built an opus in resonance with his natural and cultural environment. This collection of essays is the result of an initiative by the Fondation Farid Belkahia, created by Rajae Benchemsi, the artist’s wife, in order to perpetuate his work and his memory.

It brings together the contributions of the participants in the international symposium which was held in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2016 to mark the inauguration of the foundation and of its museum. As an opportunity to gather different ways of looking at and exchanging opinions around Farid Belkahia and his work, this volume proves that as an artist he has now found his rightful place in the new account of modernity that remains to be written.