Art bazaar

Artist Hassan Hajjaj, born in Morocco and now based mainly in the U.K., has brought the best of both his worlds to Worcester Art Museum.

His recently opened exhibition, called "Hassan Hajjaj: My Rock Stars," reflects the multicultural dynamism of the London art scene in a series of nine videos of individual performers from an international group of singers and instrumentalists, along with a related series of photographs. The show's setting sings as well with furniture, rugs and other props evoking an Arab marketplace with sunny colors and vibrant patterns of Africa.

The videos pay tribute to musicians who, while they have not achieved the mainstream fame of the hard-driving guitar heroes the term "rock star" usually refers to, have nevertheless achieved stellar status in Hajjaj's personal estimation. Museum-goers who experience the musical artistry on the 30-minute video loop likely will come to share that opinion. Some of the performers, like jazz/hip hop fusion musician Jose James, are well known, especially within their genres. Others, such as urban violinist Marques Tolliver, also have managed to make their mark. "He's not mainstream but he keeps himself busy," Hajjaj said Thursday, by phone from a waiting room in New York's Penn Station shortly before boarding a train for a weekend event at WAM.

Nigerian-born Helen Parker-Jayne Isibor, known on the London music scene as The Venus Bushfires, sings a haunting melody while playing the tonally beautiful but odd-looking flying saucer-shaped percussive instrument developed earlier this century in Switzerland, called a "hang." It's not million-view YouTube fodder, but Hajjaj said he felt compelled to share the sheer artistry of these performers, whose work requires a bit more sophistication on the part of the listener than a mass-market ditty does.

"I want people to see another side because the title is 'My Rock Stars' and usually people are used to more famous people with a leather jacket, long hair and a guitar," he said. "But in my eyes these people are the real thing. This is what they do. It's their passion. It's what they were born to do. They're not fake, like it is sometimes when there's a group or a singer and it’s more style than true art."

Hajjaj designed a site-specific installation for WAM that enhances the photographs and video work and provides an inviting setting for visitors to immerse themselves in the complex crosscurrents of contemporary culture reflected in the show.

There is ample seating around low tables that beckon visitors to stay awhile. Adding to the eye-popping mix are colorful rugs, vibrant wallpaper in layered patterns and shelves laden with locally purchased grocery store products, everything from peanut butter to shampoo to Table Talk pies. Some items were bought at a nearby Hispanic market, others at a Price Chopper not far from the museum, to represent a commercial co-mingling of cultures.

"It's about evoking this kind of environment of a bazaar or a souk, a marketplace," Jon Seydl, WAM's director of curatorial affairs, said. "So it's a place to sit and hang out and it's about also having commercial products. For Hassan, it was about how best to make this work for our installation here, and he felt like, 'Why don't you try to source as much as possible right here in Worcester?' He was adamant that it should be about design, that we get products that look really great, vibrant and dynamic together."

All of the set designing was done over the Internet as Hajjaj toggled between London and Marrakesh. WAM exhibition designer Patrick Brown Skyped with the artist to translate his vision into an environment that complements the artwork. The result has completely transformed the museum's contemporary gallery, normally a somewhat forbidding, featureless white box, into a laid-back multicultural meeting place, almost like a community living room where you can sit awhile and become acquainted with Hajjaj's talented and welcoming musical friends.

"This was an approach to contemporary art we hadn't explored in a while," Sedyl said. "It's this kind of immersive installation so it's not about the beautiful objects in the white box. It's about hanging out, about lingering, so we thought a lot about seating and trying to find a way to try to get visitors to not just walk in, look and leave."

WAM signed on for the show, which was developed by the Newark Museum of Art, in sort of a roundabout way. Sedyl had invited Newark senior curator Christa Clarke, a specialist in African art, to Worcester as a consultant to look at WAM's small African collection. "Almost in passing she said 'Oh this is an upcoming show we have. I don't know if you've heard of this artist,' and she pulled out her laptop and within 90 seconds of seeing the video I thought 'I would love to see this in Worcester.' "

Why Worcester?

"Because the show has this magical intersection of being really smart, thoughtful, provocative and on the pulse of what's going on in contemporary art," Sedyl said. "But it's also accessible and really fun, and that's really hard to do because, if you want to theorize this and talk about hybridity and post-Colonial studies, that's all here. But it's also in a really comfortable, easy, accessible setting."

Clarke said the Newark museum decided to do the show after she encountered Hajjaj's work while on a research trip to Morocco, where she had the opportunity to visit his studio in Marrakech.

"I was taken with his work visually and conceptually," she said. "He has a distinct vision that is both deeply personal and global in perspective. There is a vibrant and often playful combination of East and West, high fashion and street style, historical references and pop culture. At the same time, it challenges stereotypes, questions labels and asks us to rethink cultural relationships."

Hajjaj, whose eclectic background includes concert promoting and fashion photography, developed the idea for the "My Rock Stars" videos after he began to want a more dimensional representation of the musicians he admired beyond what photo stills could give him. The videos, all shown within frames like a mounted photo would be, were a way to make his stills come to life.

"It just happened naturally," he said. "I was always doing stills of these incredible people but a still can only tell so much, so this idea was to use the same composition as my still but then I step aside so you get introduced to the characters that I'm taking pictures of. Having them move within a frame, it becomes about them and not me."

Designing an inviting setting was another way for Hajjaj to introduce his favorite performers to a larger audience. Although Hajjaj's rock stars include people from a variety of occupations - including fashion designers, belly dancers, boxers and henna girls - the musicians from the larger series were selected for the WAM show.

"The idea was for people to come for an immersive experience and forget the world for a minute," Hajjaj said. "There's a lot to look at visually and you can hear music. It's not just white walls and a few pictures up or paintings so, if you're not into them, you just walk by and walk out again. I wanted people to have an experience when they go in."

As he waited in Penn Station, that immersive experience was one Hajjaj himself had yet to have since all of the exhibition design work had been completed over the Internet. He had a strong sense of what to expect, but that's no substitute for the real thing. "I'm very excited to see what it looks like," he said.