Nomas Foundation

Nomas Foundation aims at supporting and promoting contemporary research in art through a program of exhibitions, talks and seminars with some of most significant protagonists of contemporary culture, research and training in collaboration with schools and academies in the area, residencies with critics and artists. Nomas Foundation aims to reflect on the current state of the art language and its structures through the analysis of artistic practices and critical activating relations with a number of subject, places and publics.

Nomas is a Latin word that the Romans used in reference to the nomadic Berbers in the Sahara area.
Despite being dominated by Rome and then by the Arabs, the Spanish and, lastly, the Ottomans, the Berber nomads in this area always fiercely opposed any attempt to suppress their socio-cultural identity. The term Berber derives in turn from the Graeco-Latin barbar – he who spoke neither Latin nor Greek. Nomas, the nomad-Berber, was thus not simply a nomadic person, but also the person who was foreign and different, who spoke an “incomprehensible” language and who, from a position of power, resisted the imposition of other cultural models.