Mehdi Hadj Khalifa
Director
- Organisation
- Venise Cadre Gallery & Mehdi Hadj Khalifa Institute
- Biography
- Mehdi Hadj Khalifa is Associate Director at Venise Cadre Gallery, based in Casablanca, and a professional in the contemporary art market. He supports the structuring of artists’ careers, value building, and the development of institution-facing projects across North Africa and the Middle East, as well as internationally. A forerunner in introducing conceptual and experimental art practices within the Arab world market, he is recognized for operating ahead of recognition cycles. He notably anticipated the impact of digital cultures, the internet, and post-internet logics on painting and contemporary practices, helping to establish interpretive and valuation frameworks aligned with international standards. His approach is grounded in a rigorous methodology for documentation and value substantiation (corpus coherence, rarity, provenance, exhibition history, comparables), applied in contexts including donations, acquisitions, loans, and collection building, working with institutional partners and private stakeholders under high standards of diligence, discretion, and confidentiality. Through his roles, he has contributed to the internationalization of an emerging scene, supporting at an early stage artists who have since become key figures, among them Soufiane Idrissi, and strengthening their positioning within international reference frameworks while preserving the singularity of the works and the coherence of the overall corpus.
Speaker on
Panel: The Art Market in Morocco: Local Roots, Global Reach (FR)
Session
02/18/2026
|
17:00 - 17:55