Houda Bakkali is a visual creative and multidisciplinary artist, expert in new technologies applied to art. Her artistic career began in 2008, and since then her art has been exhibited in public and private events and institutions around the world. In 2018, she received the New Talent Award at the Festival Artistes du Monde in Cannes, France, a recognition that puts her work onto international spotlight. She has signed some pioneering projects such as the exhibitions at the international airports Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas and Málaga-Costa del Sol. These were the first ever solo exhibitions in these international airports to combine physical art, augmented reality and immersive experiences, with the figure of the woman as the protagonist. She developed a global and pioneering project on digital art, augmented reality, didactic spaces and new technologies in 6 Civic Centers of the City Council of Barcelona, with the figure of the woman as protagonist. She has signed the first ever extended reality, immersive and multimedia educational project on Don Quixote, the most universal literary work.
In 2020, she exhibited the first canvas with augmented reality at the first contemporary art exhibition held in Monte Carlo, Monaco after lockdown. Her art has also been received by the Mayor and the President of the Municipal Council of Sanremo at the iconic Casino of Sanremo and at the Palazzo Bellevue. She has exhibited at the Museum of Flowers in San Remo (Italy), in two solo exhibitions at Paradores Nacionales in Spain, the Official College of Physicians of Málaga, the iconic Reial Cercle Artístic of Barcelona and different international contemporary art salons, as well as private events in Switzerland, United States, France, Italy, Monaco, Spain, Italy, etc.
With the legendary Alliance Française (AF), she has exhibited her art in different countries such as United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, USA, Spain, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia. A global artistic and informative project that fuses physical and virtual art, without spatial, generational or temporal limits, with simultaneous and multidisciplinary exhibitions where art is the nexus between educational communities, cultural institutions and local collectives, merging creativity and learning.
Bakkali’s creative vision is based on the female figure and empowerment, diversity in all its forms and contexts, dialogue, equality and building a future that strives for success without forgetting its heritage. Her work is characterised by sensual forms, rhythm, celebration and clear messages. Each canvas highlights universal values such as happiness, joy, friendship and a hopeful vision. A work that relies on new technologies to give new dimensions to each creation and to connect with new audiences, creating synergies through an art made to be shared, enjoyed and remembered. Her creative process begins on the physical canvas, where digital technology merges with acrylic and oil, and is complemented by other techniques, formats and digital platforms such as virtual and immersive spaces, animation, augmented reality, etc., which give each canvas a new dimension, not only aesthetic but also narrative. Creating a bidirectional line of communication, a playful and informative spaces in which the audience has a special protagonism.
Bakkali’s work combines artistic and didactic activities. She gives lectures, masterclasses and workshops for different institutions. Since 2009, Bakkali has been developing a project on communication and health, focusing on the impact of new technologies and art in medical communication. Her work “Art for Health”, a multidisciplinary project using new technological manifestations at the service of art as a tool to inform and raise awareness about breast cancer, was awarded the prestigious American Illustration Award in New York in 2023. From her creative studio Houda Bakkali works for different companies and institutions, managing different artistic projects, both visual, immersive, interactive and multimedia art, visual communication & marketing, as well as, digitalization and virtual design for education.
Houda Bakkali is the first Moroccan-Spanish artist to be invited to participate in the first Web3 art project by the iconic American magazine TIME, and is part of the first group of Web3 artists of this centennial publication. She is a three-time winner of the American Illustration Award (New York). She has won the International Motion Award (New York) and the New Talent Award at the Artists of the World International Festival in Cannes, France. Her art has been honored with the London International Creative, the Paris Design Award, the Creative Quarterly (New York), and she won four Graphis Silver Awards in New York, among other awards and recognition
TRANSFORMATION: EMPOWERMENT, DEMOCRATIZATION AND SUSTAINABILITY
“The new artistic movements and trends that are digitally based or complemented by the use of digital tools and technologies open up new discussions on sustainability and social responsibility, debates on the need to generate opportunities and create artistic contexts that grow around more accessible, open and equitable principles and spaces, without physical or generational barriers that limit access to art and artistic creation through new technologies. Thinking about the future of art also means thinking about the challenges and the many benefits offered by digital spaces.
Active participation in these ecosystems, both in specialized contexts and especially in those aimed at general audiences, debates and training around them, enriches the global cultural panorama and helps to consolidate new stages for artists, institutions and the general public. Artists and main actors in digital art and culture we have the great challenge, opportunity and privilege to influence and rewrite the history of digital art through responsible, positive impact, inclusive and a universal production. To generate actions that are not only limited to the art spaces themselves and their usual protagonists, but that go much further and actively involve the whole of society -without limitations- in the knowledge and practice of these new trends, their production models, tools, spaces, uses, benefits and challenges.“ Houda Bakkali
IMPACT AND TRANSFORMATION
“Art is transformative when it becomes an organic and daily tool for empowerment. Art is transformative when genius and originality inspire emotion and reflection, dialogue and recreation. Art is transformative when its aesthetic and conceptual function transcends spatial, temporal and generational boundaries. Art is a timeless, exclusive and unique luxury, and it is transformative when artists turn it into an accessible, understandable and useful commodity. Art is transformative when it has the unlimited reach and impact of transmitting and sharing knowledge. Art is a matter of form and substance, of imagination and information”. Houda Bakkali
REVIEW BY JULIET ART MAGAZINE | ITALY, 2020
The style of Houda Bakkali is unmistakable and derives from a sophisticated and often ironic mimesis of the popular contents of the urban environment, reworked through a lively chromatic pop range and an elegant and essential design. The artist seems to consider the urban scene as a festive visual spectacle in which the images imply a multiplicity of messages, of logical, emotional and symbolic meanings: metropolitan details coming from different cultures flow into her works, unexpectedly merging into a new balance without generating conflicts. If the 60s Pop Art turned its investigation to the complex and multiform panorama of the great western metropolises with the intent to carry out an irreverent reconnaissance of mass culture, Houda Bakkali widens the field of investigation to a sort of extended macro continent that reflects in a more updated way the new integrated topography of the world, increasingly founded on inevitable mutual implications.
Her language shares with the “historical” Pop Art the intent to arouse in the viewer an immediate response and the awareness that the multi-faceted cultural horizon in which we find ourselves living is a reality that cannot be evaded or denied, but must be investigated and understood in its formative factors and in the interconnections that animate its dynamics. In recent decades, society has profoundly changed: well-being, which for some time seemed to be within everyone’s reach, has revealed its prevaricating background against the environment and the populations where mass production has been displaced.
Values have changed, today increasingly in tension between the two opposite poles of ideology and total dissolution, the vision of the world has changed, which oscillates vertiginously between bewilderment and a childish individualistic narcissism. In such a heterogeneous context it is very easy to lose orientation and not be able to find a coherent and not partial reading key to the world around us.