From art fairs to vibrant galleries, Marrakech is becoming a top spot for contemporary African art, bringing together local talent and global influences. I wrote this article on the local art scene for The New Arab.
Here is the link to the article
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My second article for the Art Newspaper France is “Gérôme in Qatar: an updated look at Orientalism.”
With the exhibition “Seeing is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme” at the Mathaf – Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar is positioning itself as the bridgehead for a new chapter in the history of Orientalism.
![1-54 Marrakech 2025. [Courtesy Mohamed Lakhdar]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/MLR57810.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1)
Small but well-curated, the 1/54 art fair in Marrakech aims to be the gateway for African art, while fostering the local Moroccan art scene. I have reported on the event for Middle East Monitor.
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The show “Nadia Saikali and Her Contemporaries” at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah until 2 August is dedicated to pioneering abstract artist Saikali, and the influence that she had on modernism in the Arab world and beyond.
This is the first of two pieces which I have written of the show, and has been just published by Middle East Monitor.
The show “I Swear I Saw That” interrogates Jean-Leon Gerome’s way of seeing, which Sara Raza recognizes as a “fantastical and highly mythologized vision of the East,” and looks at how artists from both the Middle East, the Arab world and Central Asia fought back.
A Central Asia and Caucasus expert who works extensively in the Middle East, Raza has examined the process of the exoticization of Eastern populations for a long time. She coined the term “Punk Orientalism,” which also became the name of her book and curatorial studio.
I wrote the article for Times of Central Asia.
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There is no doubt that the Indonesian art market is one of the strongest in Southeast Asia. At art fairs all over Asia and Europe, we see an increasing number of big-name artists and collectors hailing from the art capitals of Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Bandung. Private museums, galleries and studios are cropping up across the vast archipelago.
I have interviewed Indonesian art collectors Andonowati and Wiyu Wahono, as well as Tom Tandio, director of Art Jakarta, to take the pulse of the market for The Observer.
Here is the link to the article
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Back to my favourite tradition: the year in review.
Let’s start by admitting that 2025 has been quite the year.
I might call it the year of travelling and aventure, as I was constantly on the go. But perhaps I also might think of it as the year I felt more at home in the world. It has been truly an amazing sensation to be in Malta, Taipei, Doha, Seoul, Jeddah, or wherever—and feel like I was just a few blocks away from home.
Middle East Monitor has published by review of the exhibition Seeing is Believing: The Art and Influence of Gérôme at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.
The French artist, who lived and worked in the 1800s, was extremely influential in his depictions of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, shaping Western perceptions of these regions during the very century when colonialism and so-called “Oriental Studies” were entrenching global power dynamics.
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We really don’t want to hear yet another mouth uttering the old and weary truism: “In order to know where we are going, we need to know where we come from.”
But can we even look at Massinissa Selmani’s videos, drawings, and photos in his exhibition 1000 VILLAGES—dedicated to the story of his own country Algeria and currently on exhibition at Index Foundation in Stockholm—without having this truism resounding in our ears like blaring evidence? We might as well cover our mouths.
I have spoken with the artist for FLAUNT Magazine.
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My interview with Palestinian artist Mirna Bamieh has been published by Middle East Monitor.
“In the past few months I have been making, just making, making, making those pieces and trying to translate emotions into colours and glazes and firing them and creating this alchemy of understanding around them,” she explained. Her move to Lisbon, added Mirna, is a welcome pause from producing so much work.
However, one conviction resonates very strongly with her; whether in a commercial context like the fair, an experimental gallery like Nika, or an institution like Shanghai: she believes in the meaning of standing up for what’s right. “As a Palestinian, all my life I was told that my voice is not important,” she concluded. “But it is. It is very important. It is very important to speak up.”
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There’s nothing quite like a biennale to help us take stock of the art world — not just artistic trends, but also the currents of thought flowing through culture at large. And 2024 has given us plenty of international biennales to do just that.
In the West, the Venice Biennale dominates the cultural conversation. But in Asia, two South Korean biennales serve as litmus tests for the state of contemporary Asian art.
The first takes place in the city of Gwangju and is considered — rather hyperbolically — the Venice Biennale of Asia. The second is the Busan Biennale (originally called the Busan Youth Biennale), which these days is open to both young and not-so-young artists.
I wrote the article for Plural Art Mag
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For the historically underrepresented Central Asian art market, smaller fairs represent today an important alley, more than the big fairs such as Art Basel – which just had its second Paris iteration this October. “Boutique fairs,” as they are called, often present curated programming which allow a wide public – not just collectors and buyers – to enjoy the art as it was an exhibition. A selling one, of course.
In Paris, the most relevant fair which has historically presented Central Asian artists to the European public is called Asia Now, and it took place in Paris from October 17 to 20. Entirely dedicated to Asian art, the fair has historically tried to fill the gap for Central Asian art in the European market in the past ten years of its existence.
I wrote the piece for Times of Central Asia.
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
