June 24, 2025 | Art & Culture
INSIDERS / OUTSIDERS?
words Laura Cottrell
photos of Exhibition Francisco Nogueira
This season, the historic Palácio Duques de Cadaval in Évora, Portugal, presents Insiders / Outsiders?—a compelling exhibition that brings together contemporary Aboriginal Australian artists and Moroccan artists from the Essaouira School. On view through October 26, 2025, the show features approximately sixty works from the Yannick and Ben Jakober Foundation, inviting viewers to reflect on themes of identity, inclusion, and the blurred lines between center and periphery.
Curated by Spanish writer and curator Enrique Juncosa, the exhibition is a collaboration with the Fondation Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech and the Sa Bassa Blanca Museum in Mallorca—two institutions that, like the artists on view, exist in fluid conversation between cultures, disciplines, and traditions.
A CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUE
At the heart of Insiders / Outsiders? lies a juxtaposition of two seemingly distant artistic movements. Yet both emerged around the same time and share a common genesis: the support and recognition of so-called “outsiders.” More importantly, both traditions champion a deep, intuitive inner vision—art that doesn't mirror the world but reimagines it.
On one side, viewers encounter works by members of L’École de Essaouira, a movement born in the 1980s thanks to Danish art dealer Frédéric Damgaard. Drawn from a group of self-taught painters—fishermen, carpenters, and craftsmen—this Moroccan school reflects a uniquely local and spontaneous aesthetic. Artists such as Boujemâa Lakhdar, Mohamed Tabal, and Moustapha El Haddar transformed everyday life into poetic abstraction, their works pulsing with bold color, rhythm, and symbolism.
On the other, the exhibition traces the rise of contemporary Aboriginal Australian art, whose modern chapter began in 1971 when teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged local communities to paint on canvas for the first time. While Aboriginal visual culture stretches back over 60,000 years, this shift to canvas brought global recognition. Today, thousands of Aboriginal artists are represented across community art centers and institutions worldwide. Their works convey complex Dreamtime narratives, land-based knowledge, and spiritual continuity in striking, often pointillist compositions.
AN UNEXPECTED AND PROFOUND DIALOGUE
Together, these two strands form an unexpected and profound dialogue. While rooted in different geographies—Australia’s vast interior and Morocco’s Atlantic coast—they both speak to memory, ancestry, and the act of storytelling through form and color.
The setting for this cross-cultural conversation could not be more fitting. Located in the heart of Évora, facing the Roman temple, the Palácio Duques de Cadaval embodies centuries of Portuguese history and architectural layering—from Mudéjar to Gothic and Manueline styles. Still owned by the Cadaval family, the palace was built atop a former Moorish castle and has been meticulously preserved. With its inner courtyards, sweeping residential halls, and family pantheon church, the palace is not only a historical monument—it is a living archive.
Insiders / Outsiders? offers more than a visual encounter; it is an invitation to reconsider the frameworks through which we view art and artists. Who is an insider, and who decides? Can tradition thrive without institutional validation? And what happens when the margins become the center?
At a time when the art world is increasingly globalized yet often uneven in its attention, this exhibition creates space for authentic voices—voices that are rooted, reflective, and undeniably relevant.
