Le Feu qui forge is a group exhibition celebrating Mohamed Melehi’s (1936–2020) contribution to the visual arts in Morocco. Twenty-one artists participate, each presenting a work that shares an affinity with Melehi’s visual universe.
The exhibition is curated by Salma Lahlou, who explains her approach as follows: “When L’Atelier 21 invited me to conceive a group exhibition based on Mohamed Melehi’s work, I wanted to focus on the radical nature of his visual language and the aesthetic positions it asserts. By liberating form and thought, Melehi created a model. I wish to turn this model into a maieutic process.”
Melehi’s multidisciplinary practice draws on numerous fields of engagement—activism, documentary work, education and urban planning—as well as a broad range of artistic disciplines, including painting, photography, sculpture, architecture and design. Each invited artist is called upon to express, through a work, a debt to Melehi, a point of contact, a correspondence or even a dissonance.
