The Casablanca International Biennale continues its online program with a series of conversations on the theme ‘Art and Activism’ with Pascale Obolo ,Françoise Vergès and Abdeslam Ziou Ziou .

This conversation will take as a starting point the engaged cultural practices of the interveners, the growing stakes of decolonial thought and expand to look at a global context in which the need for awareness and action is affirmed more than ever, within a framework of demands ranging from anti-racist causes and social justice, to questions of the absence of representative diversities in the field of education, art and culture.

These questions will be addressed through the impact of history, especially colonial history, on the contemporary; research as a method of uncovering marginalized histories; the archive as a system for preserving and transmitting these stories; as well as through different forms of cultural interventions including artistic projects, editorials, workshops, and other forms of knowledge sharing.

The online conversation (in French) will be moderated by Christine Eyene.

Art and Activism: Pascale Obolo, Françoise Vergès, Abdeslam Ziou Ziou.

Wednesday October 28 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. (Casablanca / Paris)

Speaker biographies:

Pascale obolo

Pascale Obolo is a filmmaker, curator and editor-in-chief. Born in Yaoundé (Cameroon), she studied at the Free Conservatory of French Cinema in the Directing section, then obtained a Masters in Cinema at the University of Paris VIII, in the Experimental Cinema section. His first films document the beginning of the Hip Hop movement and the Parisian graffiti scene. A feminist filmmaker, she also focused on the place of women in artistic circles. His films have been shown and awarded at numerous festivals, including Fespaco in 2013 with Calypso Rose: The lioness of the jungle .

His approach, often resulting from plastic and digital arts, deliberately breaks with traditional narrative codes, and visual codes or clichés to which Africa is the object. Activist, his work questions memories, identity, exile and invisibility.

His works have been presented at the Musée du Montparnasse, Musée du Quai Branly, Center Pompidou, Mac Val, at the Galerie Le Manège, Kadist Foundation, David Roberts Art Foundation.

His latest works question archives through the construction of historical narratives from a post-colonial perspective, around visual and cultural representations of political and economic history, through photography, video, and performance. In her stories, she questions memories and their repercussions in our contemporary societies.

Pascale Obolo is at the origin of Afrikadaa Lab , contemporary art magazine and intellectual and artistic laboratory. She runs the African Art Book Fair (AABF), an independent publishing fair. She is also responsible for Éditions la colonie founded by Kader Attia, whose first publication La prostitution coloniale et post-coloniale was released in February 2020.

Francoise Vergès

After working as a journalist and editor in the feminist movement in France, Françoise Vergès moved to the United States in 1983, where she worked before enrolling at university. She obtained a double summa cum laude bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Women’s Studies in San Diego, then a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Berkeley, California (1995). His thesis Monsters and Revolutionaries. Colonial Family Romance was published by Duke University Press in 1999. Since then she has taught at Sussex University and Goldsmiths College in England. Member of the Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery in 2004 (“Taubira” Law of 2001), she was its president from 2009 to 2012. Between 2007 and 2010, she worked on a postcolonial museum project for the twenty-first century. Françoise Vergès held the Global South (s) chair from 2014 to 2018 at the College of Global Studies, FMSH.

Françoise Vergès is also an author of films, Aimé Césaire facing the revolts of the world (2013) and Maryse Condé. A Singular Voice (2011) and has been a consultant on several films. Independent curator, she has notably organized at the Louvre museum, L’Esclave au Louvre: une humanity invisible (2013) as well as the exhibitions Ten powerful women (2013) and Haiti, fear of the oppressors, hope of the oppressed (2014) for the Memorial of the abolition of slavery in Nantes. She regularly collaborates with artists.

She has published numerous books and articles in French and English on the memories of slavery, colonial psychiatry, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, predatory economy and globalization, the postcolonial museum, and the processes of creolization in the worlds of the Indian Ocean. Among her latest publications: A Feminist Theory of Violence. For an anti-racist policy of protection (La fabrique éditions, 2020); A decolonial feminism ( La fabrique éditions, 2019); Le Ventre des femmes , (Albin Michel, 2017 – English translation, Duke University Press); ‘ The Economy of Living Things’ , catalog ‘Oscar Murillo’ (Jeu de Paume, 2017); ‘ Racial Capitalocene’ , inFutures of Black Radicalism , Gaye Theresa Johnson & Alex Lubin (eds.) (Verso, 2017).

Abdeslam Ziou Ziou

Abdeslam Ziou Ziou graduated in Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is an independent researcher and consultant in the field of arts and culture in Morocco. He was Project and Research Coordinator at the Atelier de l’Observatoire in Casablanca. Abdeslam is interested in how the social sciences and artistic practice intersect. In this sense, he is developing an investigation – installation around family archives of an anti-psychiatric experience at the Berrechid hospital in Morocco – FOLIE, POESIE, RESISTANCE (s). He was the winner of the “Houdoud” transdisciplinary research project carried by the Fatéma Mernissi Chair (Mohammed V University and HEM) – Unesco.