What is the Biennale de Rabat?
The Biennale de Rabat is a celebration of international art with a wide variety of exhibitions taking place throughout Morocco’s capital.
The first Biennale de Rabat started September 24 and goes on until December 18. Exhibitions are taking place all over the capital in Mohammed VI Contemporary and Modern Art Museum, le parc Hassan II and le jardin des Oudayas amongst many others.

Artists and collectives from 27 nationalities are part of the many exhibitions and showcases taking place during the first ever Biennale.
The theme of this years Biennale de Rabat is ‘Un instant avant le monde/A moment before the world.’ The National Museum Foundation (FNM) explained that the aim of the festival is to “help redefine art and its paradigms from the South of Morocco and Rabat.”
“Thanks to dialogue between artistic disciplines, whether visual art and architecture to dance and performance, the Biennale invites a reflection on the purpose of creating, examining these reasons, challenges, decisive moments which push artists to take action and add to the story.”
Is it worth seeing?
The Biennale de Rabat is huge, I haven’t managed to see everything yet. From what I have seen it has been excellent. It features international artists that explore a huge range of subjects form the intimately personal to the universal. The exhibitions are excellently curated with the majority having descriptions in several languages. If you are in Rabat when its on, you need to check out some of these exhibitions!

So far I’ve been the Mohammed VI Contemporary and Modern Art Museum,the Museum of History and Civilizations, Villa Des Arts and Fort Rottembourg (Fort Hervé) and I’m looking forward to exploring more of the showcases that discuss topics such as feminism, identity and global politics. In fact most of the exhibitions I stumbled across, only after seeing the Biennale logo everywhere did I put two and two together and realise it was a citywide celebration of art.
All the exhibitions are extremely interesting and well curated. You will find placards describing the art and the artist all having Arabic and French, with the vast majority having English as well making Biennale de Rabat a truly international festival.
If you would like to know where all the exhibitions are you can check out the Biennale de Rabat website here.

I’ve already shared lots of pictures from the Biennale exhibitions that you can see on my Instagram . If you would like to keep up to date with my adventures follow me on Twitter and give me a like on Facebook!
Until next time,
-The Student Explorer