Chahrazad Zahi

Chahrazad Zahi is a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Boston University. Her research examines Moroccan art in the 1980s and 1990s—a period marked by political repression and the decline of post-independence cultural infrastructure. She focuses on artists who, working with limited institutional support, turned to installation, ephemeral media, and vernacular forms to navigate censorship and social fragmentation. Through archival research, oral histories, and visual analysis, her work reframes this era not as a lull between postcolonial modernism and the contemporary, but as a generative site of experimentation, ultimately unsettling the epistemologies inherited from the 1960s and redefining modernism beyond the confines of regional schools or nationalist frameworks. 

Chahrazad’s curatorial and editorial practice bridges Morocco and the international art world. Her writing appears in Something We Africans Got, Art Basel, and in edited volumes, monographs, and catalogues dedicated to North African artists and histories. She previously served as Head of Arts at the British Council in Rabat and has held research fellowships at Sotheby’s London and the Musée Delacroix (Musée du Louvre). Based between Marrakech and Boston, Chahrazad continues to lead curatorial workshops focused on decolonial methodologies and experimental pedagogy. 

Articles Related to Chahrazad Zahi

2025-06-02

Announcing the 2025 Cohort of the CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice

The Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) is pleased to announce the 2025 cohort of the CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice. Now in its eleventh year, the Seminar will provide twelve outstanding students from around the world with the opportunity to engage in the critical responsibilities of museums today.  The ... Read More >