Soukaina Aboulaoula is one of our 2025-2026 Curatorial Fellowship Recipients

Soukaina Aboulaoula is one of our 2025-2026 Curatorial Fellowship Recipients  

The ARAK Collection is thrilled to announce that Soukaina Aboulaoula is one of the recipients of our Curatorial Fellowships for 2025-2026. Aboulaoula will present her exhibition at the University of Johannesburg’s FADA Gallery, South Africa, in 2026. 

‍About AboulaoulaAboulaoula is an independent curator and researcher based in Marrakesh, Morocco. Her practice and interests touch upon topics such as memory, history, narration, flexible artistic pedagogies, and modes of knowledge transmission. Her curatorial work spans exhibitions and collaborative projects. Aboulaoula curated Right on Time for Sheffield Doc/Fest (2021), co-curated If A Tree Falls In A Forest at Les Rencontres d'Arles (2020–2022), and most recently co-curated May Our Song Be Worthy of Those Who Listen, a reading room and exhibition on the Raw Académie program at La Casa Encendida in Madrid (2024). 

Aboulaoula holds an MRes in Advanced Practices (Visual Cultures) from Goldsmiths, University of London. From 2020 to 2024, she was a recipient of The CAORC/Andrew Mellon Art History Fellowship in affiliation with the American Center for Maghrebi Studies in Tunis (CEMAT) to conduct research on the various narratives of Modern Art in Morocco and how they shape the interpretations of contemporary art practices. Her research focused on the writing of history and narration of certain moments/events in history from non-historical perspectives, including an exploration of affective narratives/systems and artistic interpretations and their articulations in official records. 

She is also the co-founder and co-director with Yvon Langué of Untitled Design Agency, a multidisciplinary platform for editorial design, art direction, and creative projects, launched in 2017.

About the project 

Aboulaoula’s curatorial project, aspires to study the project of Abstraction in African contemporary Art. She is interested in examining works from the Arak's Collection that employ abstractive regimes as a tool to weave narratives that reference the current socio-cultural, political, spiritual and environmental challenges. Furthermore, Aboulaoula seek’s to draw a pathway between abstraction as both symbolism and aesthetic and as a tool for claiming and staging opacity, making explicit questions of identity, (self) representation, and consciousness. Anchoring this curatorial reflection is the foundational work of Edouard Glissant, as well as discussions on the opaque, obscurity and liminality. 

About the ARAK Collection Curatorial Fellowship programme:

We invite curators to research the Collection, offering an opportunity to curate exhibitions that highlight contemporary African art. Fellows are supported from concept development to the final staging of their exhibitions, culminating in a meaningful contribution to art discourse.

The Curatorial Fellow is expected to research the collection with the intention of curating an exhibition and writing the exhibition catalogue at the end of the residency. After in-depth research, a curatorial project is submitted to be approved by the ARAK Collection Advisory Committee.

The Fellowship Program was created to support the ARAK Collection’s Mission of developing and supporting young and mid-career artists, curators and writers through promoting curatorial research, publications and exhibitions of the Collection’s works. The exhibitions, developed and produced by the ARAK Collection, aspire to be impactful on a global scale and are all associated with relevant public programming.

About the ARAK Collection:

The ARAK Collection is an independent, Qatari-based initiative that aims to promote, through exhibitions, publications, research and educational programs, Contemporary  African Art and Artists.

The collection is a resource for Artists, Curators and Researchers. It presents travelling exhibitions, lends artwork to regional and international organisations, institutions and museums, and produces print and online publications, and impactful public programs associated with the exhibitions it produces and hosts. The ARAK Collection is a public platform to foster critical dialogue around contemporary art practices with a focus on African Artists and educational programmes that have an educational and developmental impact on the local community.

The collection consists of paintings, works on paper, and prints from more than 300 young and mid-career artists from African countries.

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