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History of Art鈥檚 Mariam Souali Presents Her Drawings 鈥淎 Three Person Game鈥 at Marrakech Exhibition

March 17, 2018
"A Three Person Game" by Mariam Souali on exhibition in Marrakech

Miriam Abouzid Souali, Visiting Fulbright Scholar and artist in History of Art, is currently exhibiting a collection of drawings in a special exhibition at the Comptoir des Mines Gallery in Marrakech, Morocco. 鈥淎 Three-Person Game鈥 is an installation of drawings that merges art and play, fiction and history through the metaphor of a chess party. The installation is part of the collective exhibition 鈥淐rossings,鈥 organized in conjunction with the African Contemporary Art Fair 1:54, which concludes in April, 2018.

From the artist:

鈥淏eing simultaneously a political, a military and a poetic metaphor that combines rigidity and harmony, constraint and invention, chess is a reflection of the world. 鈥淎 Three-Person Game鈥欌 is especially an allegory that recalls the history of a centuries-old geopolitical game between three civilizations: the Occident, the Maghreb and Sub-Africa.  These three civilizations are represented by three child-players, one black, brown and white. Each are drawn on a large canvas, but also by the giant chessboard and its three different sets of childish chess pieces installed in the middle of the three drawings. Chess is a metaphor that pictures the playful but atrocious nature of power relations - between individuals, in their everyday exchanges, or between communities/nations, in their 鈥渄iplomatic鈥 relations. Chess strategies depict how these power relations work: the empowerment of some and the impoverishment and suffering of others.鈥