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History of Artā€™s Mariam Souali Presents Her Drawings ā€œA Three Person Gameā€ 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. ā€œA Three-Person Gameā€ 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 ā€œCrossings,ā€ organized in conjunction with the African Contemporary Art Fair 1:54, which concludes in April, 2018.

From the artist:

ā€œBeing simultaneously a political, a military and a poetic metaphor that combines rigidity and harmony, constraint and invention, chess is a reflection of the world. ā€œA Three-Person Gameā€™ā€™ 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 ā€œdiplomaticā€ relations. Chess strategies depict how these power relations work: the empowerment of some and the impoverishment and suffering of others.ā€