On the occasion of the 5th Night of Museums and Cultural Spaces, organised on Tuesday, 23 June 2026 by the National Foundation of Museums, L’Atelier 21 is taking part in this nationwide celebration by opening its doors from 5 p.m. to midnight. Dedicated to photography in celebration of the 200th anniversary of its invention, this edition coincides with the inauguration of the Museum of Photography and Visual Arts in Casablanca. To mark the occasion, the gallery is presenting a selection of works by Hicham Benohoud from his seminal series The Classroom.
Produced between 1994 and 2002 in collaboration with his students at a secondary school in Marrakech, The Classroom is the series that first brought Hicham Benohoud international recognition. By subverting the ordinary conventions of the classroom, the artist transforms this familiar environment into a site of experimentation where the everyday gives way to the unexpected. Using only simple materials—chairs, desks, paper, string, and cardboard—he constructs scenes that are at once strange, poetic, and unsettling. Bodies appear constrained, suspended, concealed, or transformed. Beneath their apparent simplicity, these photographs reveal the tensions between discipline, social norms, and individual freedom.
Reflecting on The Classroom, art critic Christian Caujolle wrote: “One cannot help but wonder, without ever finding a satisfactory answer: how do images that seem so calm, so gentle, manage to evoke such profound violence—one of those invisible yet very real forms of violence that affect individuals at the deepest level of their being, despite never being in the least spectacular?”
