This publication accompanies the exhibition of the same title co-produced by MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Sharjah Art Foundation of the United Arab Emirates. The book brings together projects that this French-Moroccan artist has produced over the last ten years, among them films, video installations, photographs and documentary material. The publication also includes documentation related to The Circle (2023), a video installation that examines and reactivates the legacy of the Movement of Arab Workers in France in the 1970s and which received its European premiere during the exhibition at MACBA.
The publication includes essays by the critic and curator KJ Abudu; Associate Professor Olivia C. Harrison; the curator, writer and educator Övül Ö. Durmusoglu; Elvira Dyangani Ose (MACBA); Hoor Al Qasim (Sharjah Foundation); and the hip-hop musician Rocé; as well as a conversation between the curator and writer Omar Berrada and Bouchra Khalili herself.
In her artistic practice, Khalili explores anticolonial struggles and the histories of postcolonial liberation and solidarity. By interweaving historical accounts with real-life stories, she reinforces the political agency of subjects rendered invisible by the contemporary model of citizenship and of the nation-state.
