Bouchra Khalili

The Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili addresses in her work issues related to belonging, community and democracy. She works with a wide variety of media, exploring how filmic and sonic forms can create a space for subjects rendered invisible by the nation-state model.

Bouchra Khalili invites us to reflect on how our society functions, and how the right to belong in our shared society is defined. In many ways, her work reflects the wider current situation in Europe (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, which is home to more than 180 different nationalities.

The exhibition seeks to weave together the various threads in Khalili’s work from the 2010s to the present day, and encompasses installation, film, printmaking and textile. Presented works include The Tempest Society, The Circle and The Public Storyteller. These three installations are devoted to the Movement of Arab Workers (MTA: Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes), investigating its activities in France in the 1970s as well as its relevance today. The series focuses on MTA’s two theatre groups, Al Assifa and Al Halaka, and how they used performance to advocate for equal rights, for example by running a presidential campaign for an undocumented Arab worker.

Central to Khalili’s work is the belief in the power of storytelling. In her films, non-professional performers play themselves, intersecting with our history. 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. There is a reference here to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notion of a poeta civile, a civic poet who speaks with a collective voice.

At Malmö Konsthall, Khalili lets the works speak in dialogue with the building’s architecture by creating a site-specific presentation. Newer works meet older ones, and together they form a chorus of voices, where forgotten stories from the past are brought to light and resonate in our own time. The title of the exhibition, “How to Call a Ghost”, is taken from the film “The Magic Lantern” and alludes to the ways in which ghosts from the past may be summoned and given presence.

“How to Call a Ghost” functions as a circle – with the absence of a beginning and an end – mirroring the Moroccan tradition of Al Halaqa, the circle formed around the storyteller as a gathering point for traditional oral storytelling. In Morocco, Al Halaqa has existed for several hundred years. This tradition bridges the different meanings of the Arabic word halaqa: circle, ring and assembly.

Following the movements of visitors moving freely through the space, links, connections and constellations between the works will crystallise. No single path is given, and all stories are equally important. Bouchra Khalili’s work allows us to envision a potential future in which the frameworks and hierarchies of the nation-state can be broken, and new, more equal conditions can be created.

Bouchra Khalili was born in 1975 in Casablanca, lives in Vienna and works internationally. She graduated in Film & Media Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and Visual Arts at the Ecole Nationale d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Khalili is Head of the Department of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is also one of the founding members of the Cinémathèque de Tanger, an artist-run non-profit organisation devoted to promoting and developing film culture in Northern Morocco.

The exhibition is supported by Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, Institut français and Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport.