NORTHAMPTON, MASS.- Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) presents the exhibition Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now from August 30, 2024, to July 13, 2025. This is the first career survey for multidisciplinary artist Younes Rahmoun and the first chance for audiences in the United States to view his work in depth. The multisite exhibition explores how Rahmoun has, since the late 1990s, found inspiration in a profound connection to the here and now and to the world around him. Foremost among the artist’s themes are nature, place and landscape; spirituality; and movement and migration.

The exhibition spans multiple locations across Smith College: SCMA’s galleries and atrium façade, Lyman Plant House, the banks of Paradise Pond and the MacLeish Field Station in West Whately, MA. New site-specific commissions are exhibited alongside a selection of major sculptures, drawings, videos and installations that Rahmoun has made over the past 25 years. Visitors can enjoy Rahmoun’s artworks throughout four seasons in indoor and outdoor locations across Hampshire County, MA.

“I hope with all my heart that this exhibition will interest visitors and inspire them with something that serves them on their path,” says Rahmoun, “that my artworks, or even just one artwork, bring them a moment of calm and connection with the deepest part of themselves, with that place of total light and purity.”

This exhibition connects to Smith College’s mission of developing engaged global citizens and leaders. “Smith College of Museum of Art is excited to bring Younes Rahmoun’s work to new audiences,” says Jessica Nicoll, SCMA’s Director and Louise Ines Doyle ’34 Chief Curator. “The exhibition is an invitation to step into the universe of the artist and to experience the Smith campus in new ways. This is because, thanks to partnerships between the museum, the Botanic Garden of Smith College and Arts Afield at CEEDS (The Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability), the exhibition extends beyond the walls of the museum.”

Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now is curated by Emma Chubb, Charlotte Feng Ford ’83 Curator of Contemporary Art. “What is now an exhibition and publication project rooted at Smith College with nodes in Morocco and France began in Morocco’s Rif Mountains, where Younes Rahmoun and I met in 2007,” Chubb recalls. “The project’s realization is thanks to the trust Younes placed in SCMA and to the commitment shown by my colleagues and partners locally as well as in Morocco and France.” The tricontinental reach of the exhibition is due to partner exhibitions at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (France) and Kulte Center for Contemporary Art & Editions (Morocco). Zamân Books & Curating (Paris, France) co-published the book that accompanies the exhibition.

Younes Rahmoun was born in 1975 in Tetouan, Morocco, and is one of the most widely exhibited North African artists of his generation. He is best known for his abstract art installations. Rahmoun graduated from Tetouan’s Institut National des Beaux-Arts in 1999, among the first generation of Moroccan artists to attend art school in Morocco, rather than abroad, and the first to have formal training in l’art contemporain, thanks to the Volume and Installation studio established by Faouzi Laatiris. Rahmoun continues to live and work in Tetouan. Rahmoun’s work has been featured in more than 100 exhibitions globally, including VCUarts, Doha; L’appartement 22, Rabat; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; 57th Venice Biennale; Doual’Art, Douala; and the Singapore Biennale. His work is held in many collections, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Museum of Contemporary African Art Al Maaden, Marrakech; and the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA.