Asilah Oui: Robert Blackburn in Morocco
September 19 - December 12, 2026
Opening reception: Saturday, September 19, 3-6PM
Rodolfo Abularach
Etel Adnan
Malika Agueznay
Farid Belkahia
Camille Billops
Robert Blackburn
Kamal Boutaleb
Luis Cancel
Nilde Carraba
Salem al-Dabbagh
Simone Fattal
Coca Garrido
Mohammad Omer Khalil
Mohamed Melehi
Richard Nelson
Mary Lovelace O'Neal
Abderrahmane Rahoule
Krishna Reddy
Abbès Saladi & Molly Renda
Nacer Soumi
Rose Viggiano
Michael Kelly Williams
Zarina
In 1978, more than twenty years after Morocco’s independence, artist Mohamed Melehi and diplomat Mohamed Benaïssa founded the Asilah Cultural Moussem, an annual international arts festival in their hometown of Asilah.
Rooted in the work of the Casablanca School, the Moussem centered Moroccan heritage, local materials, and communal labor. Moving art into the open-air streets allowed Melehi and Benaïssa to use the creative process to work through the lingering effects of the colonial era, reshaping their cultural identity on their own terms.
Melehi invited Robert Blackburn to establish the Engraver’s Atelier, introducing the cooperative model of his New York workshop to Asilah. Sudanese Master Printmaker, Mohammad Omer Khalil led the Atelier as Director from 1979 to 2018. Khalil and the artist Camille Billops were a part of the inaugural group. Although this was Blackburn’s first visit to Africa, he and Billops viewed the trip as a homecoming. They connected their political struggles in the United States with African liberation movements, creating a space where artists and locals met through a collective humanity and creative need to share, process and transmute the past.
Asilah Oui is titled after one of Blackburn’s woodcuts and celebrates the early years of the Moussem’s Atelier by presenting the artists’ collections of prints exchanged, photographs, and ephemera, forming a record of friendships, and the access to printmaking that developed in Asilah. The exhibition explores this generative moment when intellectuals, poets, musicians, and artists gathered to transform their surroundings, demonstrating that collective culture is a vital act of civic recovery and democratic participation.
Asilah Oui: Robert Blackburn in Morocco is curated by Imani Congdon with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
Programs at the Blackburn Study Center are made possible with major support from the Teiger Foundation.
Forthcoming
Photos by Argenis Apolinario
