Mapping Journey #8

Overview

Bouchra Khalili’s Mapping Journeys project was unveiled in its finalised form for the first time at Sharjah Biennial 10. The project is a series of eight video installations of which the final two, filmed in Istanbul and Barcelona, were produced by the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Unlike her past work, Mapping Journey is the only project in which she had already set the device in advance, she knew from the start that she would use real maps and ask people to draw their journeys directly on these maps, to make appear the parallel and invisible map that these journeys generate.

On the subject of Middle Eastern art she says the most interesting thing is how artists work on redefining the representation of the Arab world, which is torn between traditions and models that are usually shaped by the West. From that point of view art is an essential contribution to the reflection of a new modernity.

The locations Bouchra chooses for filming her projects are selected on the basis that they are transitional areas. Her work explores nomadic themes, itinerancy and clandestine existences. Mapping Journeys aims to reveal the underground geography that the migratory experience produces, and consequently, the hidden geography generated by the clandestine journeys.