Bouchra Khalili: Between Circles and Constellations

Between Circles and Constellations brings together projects from the last ten years of Khalili’s oeuvre, including film, video-installations, photography and documentary material. The exhibition will feature the European premiere of The Circle (2023), a video installation that examines and reactivates the legacy of the Arab Workers Movement and their theatre groups Al Assifa and Al Halaka in France in the 1970s.

Language and speech are a central part of Khalili’s investigations and are employed as a powerful form of resistance to hegemonic powers. The exhibition’s title refers to Al-Halqa, literally ‘the circle’, ‘the assembly’, a centuries-old tradition of storytelling in public spaces in Morocco, in which the audience participation is an essential part and where stories unfold in multiple layers. With history in constant dialogue with our present, the exhibition is a meditation on civic action and the need for what the artist calls ‘radical citizenship’.