Bouchra Khalili

In Summer 2026, Malmö Konsthall will present the Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili, who lives and works in Vienna. This will be the largest presentation of her work in Scandinavia and her first show ever in the south of Sweden.

The Power of Storytelling

Since the early 2000s, Bouchra Khalili has been working with a wide variety of media, particularly film and video. In her work, she addresses issues related to belonging, community, and democracy. Using a collaborative method Khalili explores how filmic and sonic forms can create a space for subjects rendered invisible by the nation-state model. Central to her work is the belief in the power of storytelling. In her films, people are represented through their own words – speaking to us in first-person singular. Their words also, implicitly, become part of a larger collective narrative. Here there is a reference to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s idea of a “poeta civile,” a civic poet who speaks with a collective voice.

The Right to Belong

Khalili’s work invites us to reflect on how our society functions and how the “right to belong” to our shared society is defined. Her work in many ways reflect the current situation in the EU (socially, politically, and historically), where the “right to belong” has been based on exclusion. Malmö Konsthall wishes to highlight the relevance of these issues for the region and for the City of Malmö, home to more than 180 different nationalities.

The exhibition seeks to weave together the various threads in Bouchra Khalili’s work from the early 2010s to the present day and will include installation, film, photography, printmaking and textile. Malmö Konsthall will, among other works, present “The Tempest Society,” “The Circle Project,” “The Public Storyteller,” and her latest film “The Public Scribe,” which were recently shown in Paris as part of Khalili’s three solo exhibitions made for the Festival d’Automne 2025, a multidisciplinary arts festival featuring theatre, dance, music, performance and contemporary art, held every year in Paris.

A Chorus of Voices

At Malmö Konsthall, Khalili will let the works go in dialogue with the building’s existing architecture by creating a site-specific presentation. Newer works will meet older ones and together form a chorus of voices, where forgotten stories from the past are brought to light and resonate in our own time. The exhibition is based on the idea of the circle – the absence of a beginning and an end – but also on the circle as a gathering point for traditional oral storytelling. In Morocco, al halqa, gathering in a circle around the storyteller, is a tradition that is several hundred years old. Halqa literally means “circle”, “ring” or “assembly” in Arabic.

Based on how we move through the space, links, connections, and constellations between the works will crystallize. No single path is given, and all stories are equally important. Bouchra Khalili’s work allow us to envision a potential future in which the frameworks and hierarchies of the nation-state can be broken, and new, more equal conditions created.

The exhibition “Bouchra Khalili” at Malmö Konsthall is produced in close collaboration with the artist, her gallery mor charpentier in Paris, and with support from the Institut français de Suède. The exhibition is also supported by Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art and the Malmö Art Academy.