January 18 – April 10
Essaouira – a city of artists, freedom and dreams. A place where the wind carries stories of the past, and the blue sky mixes with the history recorded in its walls. Nothing is ordinary here. The Medina seems to exist outside of time. Mysterious figures emerge from behind the winding streets and disappear, and cats wander lazily, as if they knew all the secrets of this place. “Souirilism” is an exhibition that does not try to organize it. On the contrary – it wants to absorb, shout and record this surreal energy. The inspiration for the project was Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, written 100 years ago, which calls for crossing logical boundaries and immersing oneself in what is subconscious, intuitive.
Hassane Abahou, a local self-taught artist, paints as if in a trance. His work is a clash of automatism and intuition. His canvases feature abstract forms, bursts of expression and dreamlike figures that seem to emerge from another dimension. His paintings are sincere and untamed – as if they were a record of moments that escape all control. This is Essaouira seen from the inside, by someone who has been breathing its rhythm every day, for years.
On the other hand, Michał Pawłowski, who came to Essaouira for an artistic residency, transforms the city into a personal space of mental struggles. A living laboratory of surrealism. His painting is a combination of landscape with subconscious obsessions – it is a world full of non-obvious visions. Natural landscapes clash with figures of naked women, demons and strange, animal characters. His paintings pulsate with eroticism and anxiety, and each brushstroke seems to be an attempt to understand the unattainable. It is art that is not afraid to face the darkness, the fears that hide under the surface of everyday life, and the beauty that has its darker face.
“Souirilism” is a tribute to surrealism, but also an experiment – an attempt to investigate what happens when logic gives way to intuition, and art becomes a guide in a world full of understatements. Both artists reinterpret local identity, intertwining it with universal emotions – nostalgia, dreams, anxiety. The works balance on the border between reality and dream – leading the viewer towards universal questions about the place of man in the world. By juxtaposing the work of these two artists, different in style and origin, we want to start a dialogue with the recipient. We believe that by including local recipients in our artistic explorations, we are able to break down the walls of misunderstanding and start communicating in a common, global language – the language of art.
By presenting the works of our artists in an unconventional, surprising way, we want to make it possible for viewers to free themselves from the limitations of rationalism. Let the associations build like dream visions in a chaotic but also fanciful way. Let the unconventional become obvious, let the subconscious speak. If you are looking for simple answers, you will not find them here. But if you want to see Essaouira as it is – chaotic, magnetic, a bit unreal – “Souirilism” opens the door. Just enter.
Daga Ochendowska