10.11 - 21.11.25

with

In this exhibition, curated by Nicole Haitzinger, two artistic positions are presented—those of Anja Manfredi and Ziad Naitaddi—each approaching the Atlas mountain range from a different perspective. While Anja Manfredi interprets the myths of the Atlas from a feminine point of view, Ziad Naitaddi critically examines the consequences of over-mediatisation for the inhabitants of the villages and their living realities after the major 2023 earthquake.

Anja Manfredi presents in Rabat a set of relational gazes on the Atlas: at the entrance, one sees the Atlas as a rock formation photographed in analogue, evoking stories. One of the best-known myths is that of the titanic figure Atlas, which appears in Manfredi’s constellation on the opposite wall, etched in light by an analogue photograph of the Farnese Atlas: the figure bends under the weight of the world while simultaneously carrying the celestial vault. Another reminder of bearing a load appears on the curtain, where the first cervical vertebra — not called “atlas” by accident — is brought into focus.

The act of carrying loads by female figures ultimately becomes a central motif in the staging of a small atlas of images in the Warburgian manner: here, small analogue photographs are arranged according to the principle of similarities. The isolated Atlas, historically connoted as masculine in art history, and the caryatids, connoted as feminine and forming a group, suddenly appear in contemporary and unexpected variations — abstract and figurative, as well as in performative reinterpretations. The artist Amina Ben Hassen translates the burden-bearing of caryatids into queer voguing. Contemporary choreographer Doris Uhlich transforms the bowed posture of the Farnese Atlas into a gesture of emancipatory projection. And in Anja Manfredi’s self-portrait connected to the Atlas, with sewing patterns, the constant gesture of unveiling/veiling finally becomes visible.
(Nicole Haitzinger)

The project The Presents marks a return to the High Atlas after the 8 September 2023 earthquake, which claimed 3,000 lives. The project questions the capacity of images and sounds to convey reality and transmit information in the age of social networks. Before the earthquake, landscapes, objects, and places already bore the absence of the young people who had left. These remnants, last silent witnesses of a daily life marked by migration, preserved memory — the tangible traces of those who had been forced to leave the region. After the catastrophe, even these traces, the last signs of a past existence, were erased, “exiled into nothingness.” Migration then becomes a question: can it be considered a form of destruction or invisibilisation? This invisible, ghostly, yet central figure forms the core of this research.

The project aims to rethink social representation and to deconstruct narratives held as truths about a territory marginalized both geographically and politically, where forced exile remains a reality. By installing elements that embody the decomposition of this reality and adopting an immersive visual approach — plays of form, superpositions, shifts in hue — the work unfolds as a multiplicity of images. These images amplify contrasts and perceptions of the before, during, and after of the earthquake, posing a fundamental question: how can one represent what escapes?

The project is also nourished by the region’s sudden over-mediatisation at the moment of the earthquake, followed by an equally rapid return to oblivion. This media back-and-forth, in which a marginal territory becomes invisible again as soon as the emergency fades, highlights the role of the external gaze. A framed, distanced gaze that selects, cuts out, and transports a prefabricated image of a relegated place. In the video, this gaze is expressed through fragments of reality — a broken perception that interrogates as much as it reveals.
(Elisabeth Piskernik)