Hicham Benohoud, The Classroom, 1994–2002. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy the artist.

The Classroom
A lightbox exhibition by Hicham Benohoud

Curated by Fraser McCallum

May 14 – August 31, 2026
Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga

The Classroom consists of over 100 photographs taken by Hicham Benohoud while working as an art teacher in Marrakech between 1994 and 2002. Benohoud staged increasingly elaborate scenes with his students, generating a body of work that reflects postcolonial identity, performance, and pedagogy.

The series arose from Benohoud’s frustrations with Morocco’s rigid educational system of the time, whose curriculum of repetition and mimicry bored him and his students alike. In The Classroom, Benohoud uses the school furniture and art supplies at his disposal to create quirky, witty, and poignant images.

The Classroom is not simply cheerful portraiture, as many of his students’ expressions convey ambivalence with the camera. Benohoud suggests their unease reflects the hardships or repression they faced in Morocco’s postcolonial society. The artist’s props often confine, shape, or obscure the sitter’s body, creating “visual metaphors [that] reflect the constraints of my own reality.” These tableaux exceed confinement to reveal forms of agency latent in everyday life, with the imagination and wit of young people at their centre.

Read the full exhibition description on the Blackwood’s website.

Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban, CanAsian Dance and Toronto Dance Theatre EntryWaves Residency, 2024. Courtesy the artist.

Public Programs

An event series on experimental education, movement, and creative pedagogy

Co-curated by Fraser McCallum and Jacqui Usiskin

Rooted in The Classroom is an invitation to enact alternative modes of learning amid educational austerity that erodes access, experimentation, and critical inquiry. Running alongside the lightbox exhibition, a four-part program series heeds this call throughout the summer. Led by guest contributors whose research spans performance, anthropology, critical disability studies, and social justice education, this program animates reflexive, embodied, and community-sustaining pedagogies. Sessions will foreground culture-rooted practices and plural forms of knowledge-making, engaging choreography, accessibility, illustration, storytelling, dance, and photography as tools for shared learning and artmaking. As in Benohoud’s Classroom, learning will unfold through collective inquiry, dialogue, and play.

All programs are free and open to the public. Snacks and refreshments provided. For the complete schedule, including program descriptions, contributor bios, directions, and access information, visit the Blackwood website.

Itshalit wit hatit: Dabke and Palestinian world-making under deracination
Lucy El-Sherif with Zaytouna Academy of Cultural Arts
Wednesday, June 10, 12 – 2pm
Blackwood Gallery, 140 Kaneff, University of Toronto Mississauga

Crip Choreographic Witnessing
Jose Miguel ‘Miggy’ Esteban
Saturday, July 11, 12 – 2pm
Meet at Blackwood Gallery, 140 Kaneff, University of Toronto Mississauga

Sketching the Social: You Don’t Need to Know How to Draw to Do Visual Ethnography
Maya El Helou
Wednesday, July 22, 12 – 2pm
Blackwood Gallery, 140 Kaneff, University of Toronto Mississauga

Stay tuned for a fourth program geared at children age 8–12, led by artist and educator Leila Fatemi, coming up in August.

Register on Eventbrite!

Hicham Benohoud, The Classroom, 1994–2002. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy the artist.

Acknowledgments

The Blackwood gratefully acknowledges the support of the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada Council for the Arts, and Ontario Arts Council.

Proudly sponsored by U of T affinity partners, Manulife and TD Insurance. Discover the benefits of affinity products!

The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
www.blackwoodgallery.ca
blackwood.gallery@utoronto.ca
(905) 828-3789

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Image Descriptions
1. A black and white photograph of two children woven into large poster board sheets with sketches on them. Children sit at desks in the background, focused on their work.
2. A photograph of a person in a dance studio on their back with arms and legs lifted into the air, clutching a string of black beads. Scattered in a semi-circle around them are various tarot cards and index cards.
3. A black and white photograph of a child peering under a desk looking straight at the camera with children seated at desks working in the background.