Under De(con)struction
MACAAL, Casablanca // In conversation with Farah Maakel, Head of Exhibitions
Interview and text by Elina P.
10 June 2026
In Casablanca, buildings around the old medina are coming down. They were built at the beginning of the 20th century, during the French Protectorate, a specific architectural layer, neither entirely Moroccan nor entirely European, that shaped the character of entire neighbourhoods for generations. Now they are being replaced, quickly, by more standardized construction. The demolition is fast. The residents watch from concrete stools on the pavement. The workers carefully remove zellij tiles before the walls come down, as if salvaging what can still be saved.
Ismail Alaoui Fdili grew up in Casablanca. He knows these streets. Under Destruction is his response to their disappearance, not a monument to what is being lost, but a document of the moment just before, when the present is already slipping into becoming memory.
The photographs are printed on concrete slabs. A black-and-white film follows the daily rhythms of a building in its final weeks, narrated by a resident of the medina. The concrete stools in the room are modeled on the ones people actually sit on to watch their homes come down to become on of the most emotional pieces of the show. Simple and direct in its message, yet dull-aching.
The exhibition is on view at the Artist Room of MACAAL in Marrakech until August 2, 2026, as part of Mai de la Photo, curated by Farah Maakel, Head of Exhibitions at the museum.
Fvtvrist spoke with her about memory, material, and what it means to document a city while it is (still) disappearing.
Ismail Alaoui Fdili, Under Destruction, 2026. Installation views at MACAAL.
All rights reserved, MACAAL. © Ayoub El Bardii
Ismail Alaoui Fdili, Under Destruction, 2026. Installation views at MACAAL.
All rights reserved, MACAAL. © Ayoub El Bardii
The theme of this year's Mai de la Photo is Memory. But memory is a word that can mean almost anything. How did you interpret it for this show specifically, what kind of memory are we talking about?
For this exhibition, we approached memory as something that emerges at the very moment a loss is taking place. Under Destruction focuses on a city in transition, capturing buildings, spaces, and ways of life that are on the verge of disappearing. Rather than looking back at the past, the exhibition is concerned with the instant when the present begins to slip away.
Photography is particularly powerful in this context because it has the ability to frame moments that are on the verge of disappearing. The images capture fragments of a reality that still exists, but whose disappearance has already begun. They freeze a moment of uncertainty, suspended between what remains and what is about to vanish.
What interested me in relation to this year's theme is precisely this threshold between presence and absence. The exhibition reminds us that memory does not begin once something is gone — it begins when we become aware that it may not be there much longer.
Ismail Alaoui Fdili, Under Destruction, 2026. Installation views at MACAAL.
All rights reserved, MACAAL. © Ayoub El Bardii
Casablanca is often described as Morocco's economic capital but it rarely gets the cultural attention that Marrakech does. What does it mean to bring a show about Casablanca into a Marrakech institution?
Marrakech naturally attracts a great deal of attention through its cultural institutions, international visitors, and events such as 1-54. But Casablanca has long been one of Morocco's most important centres of artistic and intellectual production. It was the birthplace of the Casablanca Art School movement, which profoundly reshaped modern art in Morocco.
The exhibition is not about Casablanca because we wanted to make a statement about the city. It is about Casablanca because this is where Ismail Alaoui Fdili lives and works. The transformations he documents are part of his immediate environment and emerge from a long-term observation of the city and its inhabitants.
As a museum dedicated to contemporary creation from Morocco and across the continent, MACAAL has a responsibility to reflect the diversity of artistic practices, experiences, and territories that shape its national scene. Presenting Under Destruction in Marrakech is therefore also a way of bringing a different urban reality into the conversation. It creates a dialogue between two cities that occupy distinct places in the Moroccan imagination and reminds us that contemporary Moroccan culture is built from multiple local histories and perspectives.
The show is built around a very specific moment, the last days of buildings around the old medina of Casablanca, before they come down. What drew you to this project, and what made it the right fit for the Artist Room at MACAAL?
What drew us to this project was Ismail Alaoui Fdili's ability to reveal what usually remains unseen during periods of urban change. Rather than focusing on Casablanca's landmarks or iconic architecture, he turns his attention to demolition sites, peripheral spaces, and the people who inhabit them.
The project also resonated strongly with Cohabit, one of the chapters of Seven Contours, One Collection, the museum's permanent exhibition curated by Morad Montazami and Madeleine de Colnet. The section explores the ways urban transformations reshape how we inhabit and share space. Under Destruction approaches similar questions through a specific moment in Casablanca, documenting a neighbourhood as it undergoes profound change.
The Artist Room was the ideal space for this project. It allowed us to present a singular artistic perspective while extending some of the conversations initiated by the permanent collection around habitation, transformation, and the ways people relate to their environment.
Ismail Alaoui Fdili, Under Destruction, 2026. Installation views at MACAAL.
All rights reserved, MACAAL. © Ayoub El Bardii
The Artist Room at MACAAL is a relatively new space, introduced after the museum's reopening in 2025. What does that space ask of a curator that the main galleries don't, and how did it shape the way you approached this exhibition?
The Artist Room is true to its name: it is the artist's room. It is a space dedicated to singular perspectives, whether through emerging practices, the rediscovery of unseen bodies of work by historical artists, or unexpected readings of the collection. More than a gallery, it is a space for experimentation, dialogue, and creative freedom.
Its intimate scale allows us to develop exhibitions that feel immersive and cohesive. We often think of the Artist Room as a cocoon, a 360-degree experience where every element contributes to the exhibition's narrative. For a curator, this means thinking not only about artworks, but about the relationships between image, space, sound, light, and movement within the exhibition.
For Under Destruction, this collaborative dimension was particularly important. Ismail Alaoui Fdili often speaks about exhibitions as the result of multiple forms of writing. Borrowing a term from cinema, he refers to installation and lighting as a "third writing," where editors, technicians, and lighting designers become active contributors to how the work is ultimately experienced. The Artist Room offers precisely the conditions for that collective form of authorship to emerge.
The photographs are printed on concrete and cement slabs, the same material as the buildings being demolished. How did that decision come about?
The use of concrete is rooted in Ismail Alaoui Fdili's practice. In earlier works, he screen-printed photographs onto concrete fragments salvaged from demolition sites. For Under Destruction, the approach evolved: the images are printed directly onto prefabricated concrete slabs. While the process has changed, the intention remains the same — to bring the material of the city into the work itself.
There is something paradoxical in this gesture. Demolition is often sudden and irreversible; entire buildings can disappear in a matter of days. By transferring these photographs onto concrete, the artist attempts to calcify a fleeting moment, to give permanence to something that is rapidly vanishing.
At the same time, concrete raises questions about the future of the city. Many of the buildings documented in the exhibition belong to a rich and diverse architectural fabric that is increasingly being replaced by more standardized forms of construction. In this sense, concrete becomes both the material of preservation and the material of replacement. It embodies the tension between the singularity of these disappearing neighbourhoods and the increasingly uniform urban landscape that often succeeds them.
DEMOLITION IS OFTEN SUDDEN AND IRREVERSIBLE.
BY TRANSFERRING THESE PHOTOGRAPHS ONTO CONCRETE, THE ARTIST ATTEMPTS TO CALCIFY A FLEETING MOMENT, TO GIVE PERMANENCE TO SOMETHING THAT IS RAPIDLY VANISHING.
Ismail Alaoui Fdili's practice has always been rooted in marginalised figures — car guards, ragpickers, informal workers. In Under Destruction, those figures are the demolition workers themselves. How did you think about the ethics of that representation?
One of the reasons I was interested in Ismail Alaoui Fdili's work is that his practice is built on proximity rather than distance. The people who appear in the exhibition are not treated as passive witnesses to change, but as active participants in a moment of transition. Many of the workers and residents featured in the project have a direct relationship to these neighbourhoods and experience these transformations firsthand.
This is particularly visible in the video, where residents and workers are seen carefully removing zellij tiles and architectural fragments from buildings before their demolition. Some of these elements were preserved and incorporated into the exhibition's scenography, alongside a street sign salvaged from a demolished street. Rather than focusing on demolition itself, the film pays attention to the gestures and sounds that accompany this process, allowing audiences to experience the atmosphere of this moment as it unfolds.
The inhabitants are filmed as actors of transformation rather than its victims. The work does not impose a singular interpretation — it leaves space for viewers to bring their own readings. Some may see practical acts of preservation, while others may recognise echoes of rites of passage or forms of care accompanying the disappearance of a place. What emerges, above all, is a portrait of resilience, expressed through the ways individuals and communities navigate change while holding on to fragments of what matters to them.
Ismail Alaoui Fdili, Under Destruction, 2026. Installation views at MACAAL.
All rights reserved, MACAAL. © Ayoub El Bardii
You've worked in curatorial contexts in France and the United States before joining MACAAL. What does curating in Morocco ask of you that those other places didn't?
Each context brings its own ways of working, expectations, and forms of collaboration. Since moving to Morocco, one of the things that has most influenced my practice is the way projects evolve through dialogue. An exhibition rarely remains exactly as it was first imagined. Ideas are challenged, adjusted, and refined through exchanges with artists, artisans, technicians, producers, and the many people involved in bringing a project to life.
What has been particularly valuable for me is recognising how much expertise exists at every stage of the process. Conversations that might initially seem technical often end up influencing conceptual decisions as well. As a project develops, each choice begins to justify and reinforce the larger idea behind it.
As a curator, it has made me more attentive to exhibition-making as a process rather than a fixed outcome. A project may begin with a curatorial intention, but its final form emerges through a series of exchanges that reveal how every element — from the artwork to the display — contributes to the overall narrative. Very often, what begins as a practical decision ends up becoming part of the exhibition's meaning.
Farah Maakel
Photo: Nezha Haddioui
About MACAAL
Inaugurated in 2016 in Marrakech, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) is one of the first spaces dedicated to contemporary African art on the continent. With a collection of over 2,000 works spanning a wide range of media — including painting, sculpture, and more recently photography, installation, and digital arts — MACAAL presents temporary exhibitions, artist residencies, and educational programmes, fostering exchange between artists, audiences, and cultural stakeholders. By combining creativity and innovation, the Alliances Foundation and MACAAL actively contribute to bringing African art to the global stage.
About Farah Maakel
Farah Maakel, Head of Exhibitions at MACAAL and an independent curator, is based between Paris and Marrakech. She holds a BA in visual arts and choreography from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Brussels, a Master’s degree in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy from Goldsmiths, University of London, and later specialised in exhibition studies through a second Master’s degree at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her curatorial practice approaches exhibition-making as a dramaturgical tool, with a particular focus on contemporary African scenes, embodied knowledge, and site-responsive formats.
Her projects and collaborations have been presented internationally through institutions and platforms including MACAAL, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Palais Bahia, and Appartement 22. Alongside her institutional work, she has developed several site-specific curatorial projects in Los Angeles, notably in David Horvitz’ garden, and was invited as a guest critic at University of California, Los Angeles.
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