Fez — Enki Bilal’s blue-toned faces, fractured futures, and politically charged imagery are coming to Marrakech this October in the artist’s first exhibition in Morocco.

“Enki Bilal: L’Exposition” will open on October 15 at the Musée des Confluences Dar El Bacha (Museum of Confluences Dar El Bacha), bringing together around 20 major works by the artist.

The exhibition is organized by the National Foundation of Museums and Artcurial.

Bilal, born in Belgrade in 1951 and based in France from childhood, has spent more than five decades moving between comics, painting, cinema, illustration, and stage design.

His career began in the early 1970s at the French magazine “Pilote,” before works including “The Nikopol Trilogy” established the visual language that would become closely associated with his name. The Fonds Enki Bilal traces that trajectory from political science fiction toward a wider multidisciplinary practice.

From graphic novels to gallery walls

Bilal’s work frequently combines science fiction with questions about politics, technology, memory, identity, and humanity’s possible futures.

Those concerns have increasingly moved beyond the printed page. Artcurial has staged several exhibitions dedicated to Bilal, including “Déchronos: Mémoire du futur” (Déchronos: Memory of the Future) in Saint-Tropez in 2024, which brought together 70 works examining time and the human condition. Artcurial presented the exhibition as a journey through the artist’s shifting visions of humanity and the future.

Marrakech now offers a very different setting for his work.

Dar El Bacha is itself built around the idea of cultural encounters. The National Foundation of Museums describes the museum as a space devoted to the artistic and cultural exchanges that have shaped Morocco, housed within one of Marrakech’s historic palaces.

Placing Bilal’s futuristic and often unsettled imagery inside that setting creates a meeting between radically different visual worlds.

With around 20 works selected for the Marrakech presentation, “Enki Bilal: L’Exposition” gives Moroccan audiences a concentrated introduction to an artist whose work has repeatedly blurred the boundaries between comics and contemporary art.

The exhibition opens on October 15 at the Museum of Confluences Dar El Bacha in Marrakech.