Maud Houssais is an independent researcher and curator based in Rabat, Morocco. Her research focuses on questions related to the making of the city by artists during the 1960s and 1970s. She is particularly interested in the emergence of a visual culture applied to the city, collectively supported by an artistic community of visual artists, designers, architects, filmmakers and writers.
She is currently co-editing a forthcoming book on the Casablanca School of Fine Arts under the direction of Farid Belkahia, published by Zaman Books & Curating (to be published in 2025). In 2024, she is curator associated to the exhibition The Casablanca Art School. Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde 1962-1987, presented at the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. In 2018, she is assistant curator of bauhaus imaginista, an art and research program exhibited among other venues to SESC Pompei, Sao Paulo (2018), and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2019).

Abstract
This research is part of a more general Mediterranean cultural history. The work and the person of Carla Accardi constitute a case study of transnational artistic networks between Italy and Morocco, in the specific political and cultural context of the 70s. This period saw the emergence of an artistic and societal upheaval, with abstraction as both an aesthetic and political language. In this respect, Carla Accardi embodies a Mediterranean feminism and is a key figure in an artistic network established between Rome and Morocco.
It’s no coincidence that Carla Accardi comes to Morocco from Rome. Indeed, the Italian capital is home to a network of Moroccan artists who have come to study at European art schools, notably the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Several of these artists, such as Mohamed Melehi and Mohammed Chabâa, gravitated around and exhibited at the Trastevere gallery, created and founded by Topazia Alliatta, which brought together the Roman and international art scene of the time. Another up-and-coming gallery owner from Morocco, Pauline de Mazières, came to Rome in the late 1960s to draw inspiration from the city’s artistic ferment. Pauline de Mazières had not yet opened l’Atelier, but the idea of opening an art gallery was ripe in her particularly after meeting Carla Accardi in Rome in 1969 at the Trastevere gallery, where the artist promised an exhibition at l’Atelier.
Two years later, in 1971, Pauline de Mazières opened the l’Atelier gallery, where Carla Accardi presented her recent work on rhodoid in 1972. This first visit foreshadowed many other artistic exchanges to come, which had a decisive impact on Carla Accardi’s life and work, not only because the encounter with the Moroccan cultural sphere opened a new perspective to Accardi’s research on signs in relation to the Hurufiyya (lettrism) movement, but also because of her involvement in artistic debates on the function of art. In this respect, the wood pannel created at the Hotel Tarik, Tangier, in 1975, is of particular interest to us, as it constitutes a fundamental vector between art and the public space.