Solo and survey: SAF presents two major exhibitions during year-end
- 06 Sep 2024
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) is presenting a major solo exhibition of works by Bouchra Khalili (Sept. 7 – Dec. 1). Titled “Between Circles and Constellations”, the show attests to Khalili’s dedicated enquiry into the hidden histories of solidarities among transnational and stateless communities. Following its showing at MACBA or Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, organised in partnership with SAF, the Sharjah event consists of a selection of significant projects over the last 15 years. Neither fiction nor documentary, the artist’s work includes visual and sonic materials, presenting ideas for new liberated forms of belonging.
Spanning film, photography, print, installation, publications and textile, the Morocco-born Khalili’s work centres around communities rendered invisible by the nation-state. Employing montage as a tool for articulation and speculation, Khalili’s narrative style invites her audience also to become active collaborators and eventually join the people populating her works. The two key words in the exhibition’s title — circles and constellations — echo the communities envisaged in Khalili’s compositions. ‘Circles’ refers to “al halqa”, a traditional Moroccan form of storytelling where people across generations gather in a circle and exchange memories and political ideals.
Though she has used the concept in the past, it is highlighted in her recent works revolving around the theatre groups founded by North African migrant workers in 1970s France. ‘Constellations’ are the network of transnational solidarities that the exhibition reveals by connecting different migrant and anti-colonial groups and their struggles across seas and lands. Her new two-channel installation “The Public Storyteller” (2024) which was shot in Marrakesh, shines the light on oral transmission as an act of resistance, while linking past political strategies to the present day and future.
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The film concludes Khalili’s series of works initiated in 2017 around the Movement of Arab Workers, its theatre groups Al Assifa (The Tempest) and Al Halaka (The Circle), and the presidential campaign of the 18-year-old Al Assifa member who ran in the 1974 French election under the pseudonym ‘Djellali Kamal’. Fifty years after Kamal’s campaign, Khalili films the story, narrated in Marrakesh, to young Moroccans in the tradition of al halqa. “Sea-Drifts” (2024), an embroidered tapestry piece, continues Khalili’s research into migration routes, building on her work “The Mapping Journey Project” (2008–2011), which traces the journeys of eight anonymous individuals, among others, in search of a better life.
The new work tracks eight migratory journeys linking the North and West African coasts, to the Canary Islands. The irregular routes are considered among the deadliest migratory paths, due to the dangers of sailing across the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Khalili recalls the arduous passages and renders them on fabric dyed with natural indigo, referencing their colonial history, connecting them with indigo trade routes from the sixteenth century. Subverting the traditional function of map-making, which has served as a tool to assert power, she makes it a witness to the experiences of stateless individuals and those compelled to undertake illegal travel.
“The Constellation Series” (2011) is the concluding chapter in Khalili’s “The Mapping Journey Project”. Using silkscreen, she transposes each journey across the Mediterranean onto a blue backdrop, whose shade lies between the sea and the night sky. In the absence of borders and other barriers, each pathway appears like a celestial constellation. Historically, constellations have served as manifestations of folklore and mythology as well as navigation aids, in the absence of landmarks. In “The Constellations Series”, the paths give rise to a collective narrative, offering a new perspective on our shared world. It is also Khalili’s sign to what she calls ‘radical citizenship’, a conception of community freed from restrictive notions of identity. The exhibition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, SAF Director and President, with Amal Al Ali and Meera Madhu, SAF Curatorial Assistants.
Khalili is a Vienna-based Moroccan-French visual artist. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions such as Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2019) and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016). She has participated in the Venice Biennale (2013, 2024) and Sharjah Biennial (2011, 2023), among others. She is a founding member of La Cinematheque de Tanger, an artist-run non-profit organisation in Morocco. SAF is also premiering the first major survey exhibition of senior Maori artist, Emily Karaka (Sept. 7 – Dec. 1). “Emily Karaka: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn” brings together selected works from public and private collections alongside new commissions.
Karaka is a descendant of the many “iwi” (tribes) of Tamaki Makaurau, the Auckland Isthmus, Waikato-Tainui, Ngati Kahu and Ngati Hine. Largely self-taught, she is an abstract expressionist, a colourist and an assemblage artist. Born of the politics of colonisation, her work is personal, passionate and anchored in Maori rights related to the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand. Described by Karaka as ‘political landscapes’ or ‘self-portraits personal in the landscape’, her paintings embody her advocacy for iwi justice and equity. Recognised for their emotional intensity, saturated colour palette and often ambitious scale, her canvasses carry messages of Maori sovereignty, social justice, care for the environment and love for her family. Karaka’s (b. 1952) paintings draw on diverse art-making traditions, including abstract expressionism and “toi whakairo”, the Maori practice of carving in wood, bone or stone and frequently incorporate text. The exhibition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi and Megan Tamati-Quennell, co-curator of Sharjah Biennial 16, with Amal Alkhaja, Assistant Curator, and Abdulla Aljanahi, SAF Curatorial Assistant.
