Morad Montazami

Morad Montazami (France, 1981) is an art historian, publisher and curator. After working at the Tate Modern (London) between 2014 and 2019 as “Middle East and North Africa” curator, he developed the editorial and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating, which explores and revalues Arab, African and Asian modernities. He is the author of numerous essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif Al Ani, Faouzi Laatiris, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar and Behjat Sadr, and exhibitions including Bagdad Mon Amour, Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, The Mosaic Rooms, London & MACCAL, Marrakech & Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, 2019-2020; Douglas Abdell: Reconstructed Traphouse, Cromwell Space, London, 2021 ; Monaco – Alexandria. Le Grand détour. World cities and cosmopolitan surrealism New National Museum of Monaco, 2021-2022.

Morad Montazami’s project at Villa Medici involves the finalization of two books and an exhibition project. The first book, conceived as a personal essay, Modernités cosmogoniques ou Pétro-modernités : pour une écriture alternative du modernisme, is a panorama of figures (painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets of the 20th century, from Baghdad to Algiers, via Cairo, Rome and Paris), for whom oil becomes a cosmogonic matrix, linked as much to the earth as a natural deposit as to politics via coups d’état and other revolutions. The second work, conceived as a collective book/exhibition catalog, Routes cosmogoniques: une histoire visuelle post-pétrole, is a panorama of (contemporary) photographers, video artists and digital practitioners concerned with the energy transition, the survival of ecosystems, resistance to unbridled urbanism or military-industrial colonization.