Malika Agueznay

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Malika Agueznay (born 1938) is a Moroccan artist. who had great influence in the world of abstract art in Morocco’s postcolonial transition. She is known for her paintings, etchings, and sculptures. She is said to be Morocco’s first woman Modernist having an integral part in shaping the visual language of the newly independent Morocco. Agueznay’s works are mostly paintings of biomorphic shapes resembling calligraphic algae.

Early Life and Family

Agueznay’s was born in Marrakech Morocco in 1938. She grew up in the town of Tameslouht, a rural working-class community where she learned the importance of traditional values, and the craft qualities of her work and grew an appreciation for the Moroccan world and culture. She grew up in a household that practised and lived by the morals of the Islamic religion. She had a good childhood; she recalls enjoying the orange-flower-scented gardens and biking to her French school from her childhood home. Lots of Agueznay work is inspired by her hometown, her paintings are reminiscent of the nature and the colours of her childhood⁴. She entered the art world later in her life, before finding her passion for art she studied social work and started a family. Her daughter Amina Agueznay followed in her footsteps, attending the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca, and also becoming a popular Moroccan artist.

Education

Agueznay originally began studying to be a psychologist in France in the early 1960s. Like other women in her generation, she was not encouraged to become an artist. However, despite her obstacles and others’ opinions, she entered the École des Beaux-Arts of Casablanca, where she studied ceramics and photography from 1966 to 1970. At the school of Casablanca, she began developing what became her personal motifs, colours, and symbolism. Some years later in 1978, she was invited to the International Festival of Assilah, where she learnt and practiced the art of engraving, she met printmakers and professors such as Mohamed Omar Khalil and Robert Blackburn. Agueznay’s developed a love for engraving and so, she travelled to New York to continue her studies under Mohamed Omar Khalil and Robert Blackburn’s guidance. Malika Agueznay’s also attended the “Counterpoint” workshop in Paris conducted by Hector Saunier and Juan Valladores.

Artwork and inspirations

Malika Agueznay entered the art scene while Morocco was undergoing its decolonization process, there was a new sense of independence and freedom in Morocco. Moroccan artists like Agueznay had to undertake the task of decolonizing their art. Agueznay’s was a pioneer in the Moroccan art world, she is said to be the first woman to develop abstraction and her work/stylistic choices had a great influence on Morocco’s art world.

She discovered a lot about her artistic style during her years at the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca. She grew interested in biomorphic seaweed shapes and plants with round forms, she finds significance in these organic shapes because she sees them as a symbol of the start of life and a way to represent femininity. Agueznay’s seaweed-inspired art consists of organic, curvilinear shapes arranged into balanced, maze-like compositions, all the lines and shapes sway into irregular rhythms encountering one another. Since the late 1960s, she has used specific colours in her seaweed paintings, these colours include bright reds, blues, oranges, yellows, and greens; these colours are reminiscent of her childhood in the Tameslouht. Agueznay has been creating representations of seaweed throughout her entire art career, some of her earliest depictions from 1967 are hanging in her home today. She has also assembled seaweed motifs into figures and sculptures to reinforce the message that without nature we would not exist.

Agueznay has explored various stylistic choices, but her main focus has always been the relationship between nature and humans. Her love for nature allowed her to explore the ocean, the constellations, and the sun in some of her works. However, seaweed shapes were usually her main focus. Agueznay’s has also used the yin and yang symbol in many of her works, this allows her to explore the good and bad in life’s trajectory; some of her earliest representations of yin and yang are from her 1967 ceramic wall hangings and in some of her acrylic paintings from the late 1960s.

Calligraphy

In the 1980s Agueznay began adding a new element to her works, and she started developing her calligraphic style. Many of her work shows compositions of plant life combined with Arabic calligraphy. It was actually by chance while Agueznay was drying marine plants for another project that she noticed how the seaweed formed letters. She enjoyed deciphering the letters and she hoped her audience would too. Agueznay often adds hidden messages, words, or poems in her work, allowing her audience to try and decipher the words and the meanings behind the messages. Over her years as a professional artist, Agueznay has painted or printed Quran verses, hadith, poetry, and songs. Some of her print series included repetitions of God’s ninety-nine names, the word Allah, and the qualities of Moroccan identity that are most important to her. Some of these qualities include love, peace, humility, affection, and generosity, these are what she refers to as her “magic words”. Lots of her messages in her calligraphic work encouraged her audience to take care of the environment and each other. Agueznay’s creations respect the Islamic principle of aniconism: not depicting living beings. Her art plays with forms, colours, and compositions, expressing a mastery of the nature-influenced abstraction

Mediums

Agueznay’s has worked with various mediums but in the 1960s she primarily used acrylic for her paintings. After graduating from the school of Casablanca she switched to mostly oil paints. A big part of Malika Agueznay’s life as an artist involves printmaking and engraving. She developed her admiration for engraving after attending a workshop led by master engraver from New York, Robert Blackburn. Her decision to pursue this physically demanding medium reflects her deep respect for the mental and physical requirements of the craft. She also sees it as an “expression of her acceptance of surprises” because she cannot always control the exact outcome of the engraving or printmaking process. The most labour-intensive technique she uses is copper or zinc plate drypoint intaglio, where she carves directly into the metal plate or matrix. She also works with wood and other materials to build her sculptures. Agueznay’s often mixes mediums, she says engraving allows her to do everything she cannot achieve with painting, and she says her painting and engraving work together.

Collections and exhibitions

In the 1980s Agueznay created one of her most experimental and introspective collections, what she called her memory tableaux. The artworks in her memory tableaux represented women from her childhood, including her mother, sister, grandmother, and family friends. She created photorealistic portraits painted from memory, these portraits are intertwined with seaweed to blend the past and present together. The woman she painted are posed in moments of creation and holding tools used for their crafts, for example, Agueznay’s grandmother is painted with a ceramic container used to churn butter; some of the works from this collection even contain narratives depicting different tasks or activities.

Malika Agueznay’s exhibitions include:

• Malika Agueznay comme en 68: Tribute to a pioneer (2020), Loft Gallery, Casablanca
• Malika Agueznay: Art Rooted in Time (2021), So Art Gallery, Casablanca
• Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s (2022), The Block Museum, Chicago

Career highlights

Malika Agueznay’s artist debut was at the Asilah arts festival in 1978 and since then she has been shown in over 100 group and solo exhibitions worldwide. Her artwork is in the collections of Moroccan, United States, United Arab Emirates, Japanese and Iraqi museums. Agueznay was also part of the Casablanca Movement in 1966, this movement was changing the boundaries of art and reconsidering what art was. During this Movement, she contributed to Moroccan modernity and helped define its codes and forms.

In February 2015, there was a Presentation and dedication ceremony to pay homage to Malika Agueznay and release the book the CDG foundation and the ONA foundation created. The book is a retrospective that shines the spotlight on Agueznay commemorating her long and productive artistic career.

References

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