Asilah Oui: Robert Blackburn in Morocco

September 19 - December 12, 2026

Opening reception: Saturday, September 19, 3-6PM

Rodolfo Abularach

Etel Adnan 

Malika Agueznay

Farid Belkahia

Camille Billops

Robert Blackburn

Kamal Boutaleb

Luis Cancel

Nilde Carraba

Salem al-Dabbagh

Simone Fattal

Coca Garrido

Mohammad Omer Khalil

Mohamed Melehi

Richard Nelson

Mary Lovelace O'Neal

Abderrahmane Rahoule

Krishna Reddy

Abbès Saladi & Molly Renda

Nacer Soumi

Rose Viggiano

Michael Kelly Williams

Zarina

In 1978, more than twenty years after Morocco’s independence, artist Mohamed Melehi and diplomat Mohamed Benaïssa founded the Asilah Cultural Moussem, an annual international arts festival in their hometown of Asilah.

Rooted in the work of the Casablanca School, the Moussem centered Moroccan heritage, local materials, and communal labor. Moving art into the open-air streets allowed Melehi and Benaïssa to use the creative process to work through the lingering effects of the colonial era, reshaping their cultural identity on their own terms.

Melehi invited Robert Blackburn to establish the Engraver’s Atelier, introducing the cooperative model of his New York workshop to Asilah. Sudanese Master Printmaker, Mohammad Omer Khalil led the Atelier as Director from 1979 to 2018. Khalil and the artist Camille Billops were a part of the inaugural group. Although this was Blackburn’s first visit to Africa, he and Billops viewed the trip as a homecoming. They connected their political struggles in the United States with African liberation movements, creating a space where artists and locals met through a collective humanity and creative need to share, process and transmute the past. 

Asilah Oui is titled after one of Blackburn’s woodcuts and celebrates the early years of the Moussem’s Atelier by presenting the artists’ collections of prints exchanged, photographs, and ephemera, forming a record of friendships, and the access to printmaking that developed in Asilah. The exhibition explores this generative moment when intellectuals, poets, musicians, and artists gathered to transform their surroundings, demonstrating that collective culture is a vital act of civic recovery and democratic participation.

Asilah Oui: Robert Blackburn in Morocco is curated by Imani Congdon with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. 

Programs at the Blackburn Study Center are made possible with major support from the Teiger Foundation.

Forthcoming

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to the individuals, galleries, estates, and collections whose generosity and loans made this exhibition possible. With gratitude to Hisham Aidi, Hatim Betioui, Omar Berrada, Ernestine White-Mifetu, Tarek Elhaik, Toni Maraini, Fatima-Ezzahra El Khammas, Jenna Hamed, Amina Ahmad, Ethel Renia, Ximena Abularach, Estate of Krishna Reddy, Nelson/Dunks Collection, Greene Naftali Gallery, Ryan Lee Gallery, Luhring Augustine, Galerie Lelong, the Estate of Rodolfo Abularach, and David Nolan Gallery.

Special thanks to Mujah Maraini-Melehi, Amina Agueznay, and Shafiah Bennaissa for sharing their stories and support; and to the artists of the Print Atelier: Simone Fattal, Luis Cancel, Judy Blum Reddy, Rose Viggiano, Michael Kelly Williams, Richard Nelson, and the Atelier's Director of 27 years- Mohammad Omer Khalil - for their generosity, loans, and continued commitment to support to the Workshop and keeping Bob's legacy alive.

Programs at the Blackburn Study Center, a space dedicated to the history and legacy of Robert Blackburn, are made possible with major support from the Teiger Foundation.  Over the next three years, the Workshop will foreground its international connections through Global Impressions, a programming initiative that builds on Blackburn’s legacy of solidarity with artists from the Global South, showing how print has functioned as both cultural resistance and diasporic exchange. 

Learn more about the first iteration of the Global Impressions series Mohammad Omer Khalil, Common Ground curated by Amina Ahmed and Jenna Hamed.

Free & Open to the Public.

WED - SUN 
12 - 6PM