The International Biennale of Casablanca has named Soukaina Aboulaoula and Cindy Sissokho as Associate Curators of the 5th edition. Alongside main curator Christine Eyene, the appointment of these young curators responds to the new orientations instilled by Eyene beyond the artistic project, to make the biennale a platform for professional development and knowledge sharing.

Soukaina Aboulaoula is an independent curator and programme coordinator based in Marrakech, Morocco. With a background in film and audiovisual production, she worked at the Marrakech Museum of Photography and Visual Arts (MMP+) in 2015 and at the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden – MACAAL in 2016.

Aboulaoula took part in MADRASSA’17 curatorial training and residency with L’Atelier de l’Observatoire, Casablanca. She was a fellow at Raw Académie Session 4—Corpus Callosum, directed by Tracey Rose at Raw Material Company, Dakar (2018), and also participated in the first Young Curators Academy during the 4th Berlin Autumn Salon at Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2019).

She is currently involved in a research driven by questioning the contours of the end of the Casablanca group, and examining the transition from Moroccan Modernism to the present time. In 2017, with graphic designer and curator Yvon Langué, she co-founded Untitled, a curatorial and art direction agency based in Marrakech.

Cindy Sissokho lives and works in Nottingham, UK. She is a cultural producer, curator and young writer with a specific interest in intellectual, political and artistic aspects of decoloniality within the arts and feminist movements and writings. She is also part of the Nottingham-based collective SHEAfriq, a group of creative Black women that programme a diverse range of events in and out of institutions to reclaim their space and visibility within the city. She is passionate about the dissemination of epistemologies and new cultural productions from the ‘Global South’ as a political space.

Sissokho studied Communication, Media & Cultural Mediation at University Paris 8, France (2014), including a fully-funded Erasmus year to study at Panteion University in Athens, Greece. She also earned a Master’s in Cultural Events Management (2015) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

After working at Nottingham Contemporary in the Exhibitions and Public Programmes departments (2017-2018) she joined New Art Exchange (NAE) – the largest gallery in the UK dedicated to culturally diverse contemporary visual arts – as Curator and Special Projects Producer. She partly manages the national and international touring of NAE’s exhibitions and coordinates ExperiMentor – NAE’s artist development and mentoring scheme for local emerging artists.

Cindy Sissokho, who leads on the African iteration of NAE’s programme Here, There & Everywhere – Africa / UK: Transforming Art Ecologies, will play an active role in a major collaboration between NAE and the International Biennale of Casablanca. The partnership comprises the creation of professional development opportunities including Sissokho’s curatorial position and two internships within the biennale’s curatorial team; the commission of new works; and a symposium gathering important figures from the African curatorial scene.