NORTHAMPTON, MASS.- For his first-ever North American exhibition, Moroccan contemporary artist Younes Rahmoun created Here, Now, a multi-disciplinary, sensory experience at Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) with two outdoor art installations on the college grounds, one in the Botanic Garden conservatory gallery, and more sculptures, drawings, and other artworks inside the museum’s galleries and windows. Fifteen works, created over the last 25 years, are on view through July 13, 2025 at the museum - which is open and free to the public year-round.


Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now exhibition installation detail. Photo by Stephen Petegorsky for SCMA

Born in 1975 in Tetouan, Morocco, Rahmoun sees his art as providing space to connect with the self and to be in the here and now. Foremost among his themes are nature, place and landscape; spirituality; movement and migration. “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 who will return to the museum in late April. “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.”


Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now exhibition installation detail. Photo by Stephen Petegorsky for SCMA

Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now encourages visitors to walk – and drive – between the site-specific installations. Ghorfa #13 (Al-Ana/Huna) is a small, unusually shaped room, a remote place to offer stillness and reflection after walking through the forest at the college’s Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station in West Whately, Mass, a short drive from the museum. Rahmoun created Chajara-Tupelo along the banks of Paradise Pond and near the college’s Japanese Garden on its campus in Northampton. There, he planted a swamp-growing tupelo tree during a performance in September 2019. A video installation called Habba is located in the college’s Lyman Plant House, reminding visitors of the regeneration of seeds from trees to seeds again. The main exhibition of Here, Now features the other works inside the museum at 20 Elm Street in Northampton.


Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now exhibition installation detail. Photo by Stephen Petegorsky for SCMA

“As spring approaches, Here, Now offers visitors an opportunity to see contemporary art both indoors and out and to spend time with intimate sculptures and drawings, video and multi-media works of art in what will be a mind-opening experience from a leading artist in Morocco,” said Jessica Nicoll, Director and Louise Ines Doyle ’34 Chief Curator of SCMA which is home to more than 28,000 works of art. “It’s a remarkable opportunity to see this triumphant debut on this continent by an artist who has been featured in more than 100 exhibitions worldwide.”


SCMA’s Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now exhibition entrance. Photo by Stephen Petegorsky for SCMA

Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now is curated by Emma Chubb, Charlotte Feng Ford ’83 Curator of Contemporary Art who met Rahmoun in 2007 in Morocco’s Rif Mountains. Their exchanges and collaborations in the years since provide the foundation for his exhibition in Northampton. Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now opened in August 30, 2024 and runs through July 13, 2025.


Emma Chubb, SCMA’s Charlotte Feng Ford '83 Curator of Contemporary Art, giving a tour of Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now in the installation Jabal-Hajar-Turab #15 (Mountain-Stone-Earth #15). Photo by Jessica Scranton

Chubb said: “The exhibition is an invitation into the world of an artist—Younes Rahmoun—a world that is rooted in the city, Tetouan, and the nearby Rif Mountains, where he grew up and lives today, yet also shaped by the many places where he has developed and refined his artistic practice since the late 1990s. Visitors say that they feel the presence of the artist when they’re here. His voice resonates softly throughout one floor of the exhibition from the installation, Wahid; his handprints appear on the glazed ceramic surface of Nakhla-Khazaf; and when you walk to the Ghorfa #13, or return via a trail along which mountain laurel will soon bloom, you follow the path that he, and many others, have also walked. It’s a show that centers questions of place and connection, with ourselves and with each other, always multiple and changing yet linked.”

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: Here, Now exhibition installation detail. Photo by Stephen Petegorsky for SCMA

Research and planning for this exhibition was made possible by a generous grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now is supported by the Judith Plesser Targan, class of 1953, Fund; Maxine Weil Kunstadter, class of 1924, Fund; SCMA Publications and Research Fund; Ann Weinbaum Solomon, class of 1959, Fund; Botanic Garden of Smith College; Charlotte Feng Ford, class of 1983, Research and Travel Fund for Contemporary Art; and Bonnie Johnson Sacerdote, class of 1964, Museum Education Fund.

Several events are planned in response to Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now: The Miller Lecture in Art History with Dr. Hannah Feldman on Friday, March 28 at 4:30 p.m., and an online program and conversation between Emma Chubb and Sarah Loomis, Associate Director of Education and Interpretation at the Botanic Garden, on Friday, April 4.


Artist Younes Rahmoun preparing Markaba (vessel) for gallery installation in late summer 2024. Photo by Jessica Scranton

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, where he was among the first generation of Moroccan artists to attend art school entirely in Morocco, rather than abroad. 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.