Video installation ‘My Rock Stars’ of Hassan Hajjaj in Newark Museum, Newark. February 25 until August 9, 2015
About:
http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/2014/09/02/my-rock-stars-experimental-hassan-hajjaj-creates-a-global-stage/
Hassan Hajjaj: My Rock Stars presents a video installation by Moroccan-born, UK-based artist Hassan Hajjaj, along with a related series of photographs, in a salon installation designed expressly for the exhibition. The video, My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume I (2012), recently acquired by the Newark Museum, pays tribute to individuals who—though they may not all be famous—have inspired the artist personally. The video features nine separately filmed performances by an international group of musicians and singers whose influences include hip-hop, jazz, as well as Gnawa (traditional north African spiritual songs by descendants of enslaved west Africans).
See more at: http://www.newarkmuseum.org/hassan-hajjaj#sthash.epZjklHU.dpuf
BIOGRAPHY:
Born in Larache, Morocco, in 1961, Hassan Hajjaj left Morocco for London at an early age. Heavily influence by the club, hip-hop, and reggae scenes of London as well as by his North African heritage, Hajjaj is a self-taught and thoroughly versatile artist whose work includes portraiture, installation, performance, fashion, and interior design, including furniture made from recycled utilitarian objects from North Africa, such as upturned Coca-Cola crates as stools and aluminum cans turned into lamps.
Turning to photography in the late 80s, Hajjaj is a master portraitist, taking studio portraits of friends, musicians, and artists, as well as strangers from the streets of Marrakech, often wearing clothes designed by the artist. These colorful and engaging portraits combine the visual vocabulary of contemporary fashion photography and pop art, as well as the studio photography of African artist Malick Sidibe, in an intelligent commentary on the influences of tradition in the interpretations of high and low branding and the effects of global capitalism.