Artists

Bouchra Khalili

Press release

The exhibition presents a selection of works by Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili (b. 1975), whose multidisciplinary practice develops collaborative strategies of storytelling with members of communities excluded from citizen membership. Combining the traditions of post-independence avant-gardes and conceptual practices, Khalili’s work suggests poetical hypotheses for newer imaginations of community. The piece around which the exhibition is structured is The Mapping Journey Project, 2008-2011, a large-scale video installation. The piece is a recent acquisition for the museum’s collection, and this is its first presentation in Denmark. Most recently, it was featured in the main exhibition Foreigners Everywhere at the 2024 Venice Biennale. In The Mapping Journey Project, eight individuals recount their forced illegal journeys. As they narrate their tortuous and often year-long journeys, each person traces their individual travel route on a map. The journeys are driven by both political and economic circumstances and span from North and East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, across the Mediterranean, West Africa and Europe’s borders. These singular itineraries emphasize the persistence of the human being in search for a better shared future. The Constellations Series, the closing chapter of The Mapping Journey Project, poetically reformulates and illuminates the video installation. The eight silkscreen prints translate the narrated journeys in the form of constellations of stars, referring to ancient astronomy as rooted in mythology. Khalili invites viewers to actively project themselves into the constellation to collectively imagine other ways to belong. Ultimately, I see my work as forming a large ‘choir’, with voices coming from different places, times and languages, yet still forming part of the same transnational and trans-historical ensemble. The historical framework for all the works on show is the last 50 years of migratory movements around the Mediterranian and the conditions of North African migrant workers in France. Seen together the works add multilayered historicized perspectives on new imaginations of community beyond restrictive conceptions of identity and belonging. The exhibition is presented in the museum’s Hall Gallery and Column Gallery. Circles and the colour blue are key in the scenography. The circles are inspired by the Moroccan tradition of public storytelling and performances called Halaka (‘ring’, ‘circle’ or ‘assembly’ in Arabic), where the audience forms a circle around the performer. Blue is the colour of the sea and sky – spaces that connect us around the globe, spaces without closed borders, spaces in constant flux.