Bouchra Khalili @Sharjah Biennial 15

Discover Bouchra Khalili’s mixed media installation The Circle at the 15th Sharjah Biennial: Thinking Historically in the Present.

The installation, co-commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, Luma Foundation, and MACBA (Barcelona) shows Mia and Lucas, two young French of Tunisian and Algerian descent, investigating the birth of Al Assifa, an agit-prop theatre group formed in Paris in 1973, and its sister theatre group Al Halaka. Together, they excavate the context of a movement originating from migrant communities, combining, like in an editing room, the little material left to revisit that suppressed part of their heritage, which culminated with “Djellali Kamal”, an anonymous member of Al Assifa, candidate to the French presidential election of 1974. Simultaneously, surviving members of Al Assifa and Al Halaka, re-enact the unarchived performances they played 50 years earlier, bearing witness to the oppression and exclusion then suffered by migrants in France and its continuum.

Bouchra Khalili was recipient of this year’s Sharjah Biennial Prize for her work The Circle, which is on view until June 11, 2023.