‘Here, Now’: Moroccan artist Younes Rahmoun holds first North American exhibition at Smith College Museum of Art

Moroccan abstract artist Younes Rahmoun has shown work in more than 100 countries, but his first ever North American exhibition is on display right here in the Pioneer Valley.

In his exhibition “Here, Now,” Rahmoun is showcasing 15 total works created in the last 25 years that aim to provide “space to connect with the self and to be in the here and now. Foremost among his themes are nature, place and landscape; spirituality; movement and migration,” according to a news release. The exhibition includes works on display at the Smith College Museum of Art, plus a number of site-specific installations on the Smith campus and at the MacLeish Field Station in West Whately.

Curator Emma Chubb said Rahmoun’s work is “really expansive in its ideas and materiality.”

“He’s making things with fabric, with metal, with clay, with paper, with light, with glass windows, and they all seem to connect back to this universe, which is his universe that he wants to share with others,” she said. “I think there’s a real spirit of connection and generosity that is a throughline in all of his work that I really admire, and I think it opens onto all these questions about art, about the relationship of art to the world.”

“It still is very strong visually, and I think it’s hard for an artist sometimes to have such a clear vision that moves across so many different material[s] or media,” she added, “and I think he does that very well.”

Chubb has an academic background in Moroccan art and has lived in Morocco, where she first met Rahmoun. She wanted to use her role at the museum to connect Moroccan artists with an American art institution, and Rahmoun seemed like a great fit.

“He’s really interested in ideas of nature and interdisciplinary conversations and place,” she said, which “felt like it would bring a lot of nice connections and feel really valuable.”

Though this is Rahmoun’s first full exhibition in North America, it’s not his first time bringing work to Smith. In 2019, as part of a performance called “Chajara-Tupelo,” he planted a tupelo tree by Paradise Pond in front of a crowd, during which he wore clothing borrowed from Botanic Garden staff. The exhibition text by the tree says, “As it grows, the tree provides a reminder of the moment of togetherness during its planting and an open-ended invitation to contemplation, extended to all who visit.” (In a 2022 blog post for the museum, Smith student and museum research fellow Indigo Cassais wrote, “I didn’t know why I was so drawn to the tree. I still don’t totally understand it, but I think it has something to do with the meditative quality of returning to one spot again and again. The tree is always there. It’s a constant. But at the same time, it is different every time I see it.”)

Another tree-connected installation, “Ghorfa #13,” sits in the forest at the college’s MacLeish Field Station in West Whately. The structure, which Rahmoun started building in 2006, is a small wooden space with transparent walls, designed such that visitors “can be inside for a moment, can be a long moment or short moment, and to have this time of being alone, being with self, and to maybe connect with the inner space that we have.”

“It’s a very special place because it’s a calm place. We are connected with nature, but in a huge place of nature, and with very high trees,” he said. “… So we can be inside, protected, but at the same time we are outside also because all of the walls are transparent.”

Inside the Lyman Plant House is yet another tree-themed work, a seven-minute video installation called “Habba,” whose name means “seed.” It shows the life cycle of a tree from a seed to fruits through an animated series of 171 drawings created by Rahmoun.

Of course, not all of Rahmoun’s work has such an overt connection to the natural world. One installation, “Markib,” which means “boat,” is an exhibition copy made of 99 folded paper boats with green lights inside. The boats, which were folded by both museum staff and Smith students, are suspended in a circle in midair inside a dark space.

Each boat represents a person, Rahmoun said, and the lights represent a sense of inner light. Their positioning midway between the ceiling and the ground represents a sense of being halfway between what he called “the spiritual dimension and the real dimension.”

“It’s a symbolic work about community, about being together to receive this light come from somewhere,” he said, indicating cables connecting the lights to a power source. “All of these communities receive this light because they are together.”

“When we were testing the light mechanism, the light felt very low and weak to me,” said Chubb. “I remember thinking, ‘How is this going to read in a room?’ And then you have all 99 together, and it is very strong, so the metaphor became real.”

Chubb said she hopes visitors take away not only an interest in Rahmoun’s work and contemporary Moroccan art, but also a new understanding about the ways that different parts of the Smith campus connect to each other. Beyond that, her intended takeaway is, “We can find inspiration in the things all around us — simple things that maybe we don’t see or notice every day, that can inspire us and make us feel closer to one another.”

“Here, Now” will be at Smith College through Sunday, July 13.