Bouchra Khalili

Left: Mapping Journey #2, DVD still, 2008
Right: The Constellations Fig. 2, silkscreen print, 40x60cm, 2011

Left: Mapping Journey #7, DVD still, 2009
Right: The Constellations Fig. 7, silkscreen print, 40x60cm, 2011

The Constellations Fig. 1, 
silkscreen print, 40x60cm, 2011 

Bouchra Khalili's work is visually sparse, but encapsulates so many layers of meaning that it took me a good portion of the day to ponder before I really felt I was ready to write about it.  Born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1975 and raised both there and in France, she now works in locations throughout the Mediterranean, where she finds most of her subjects -- exiles, illegal immigrants, people always in transit. The majority of her recent work shows a concern with the complicated and risky process of migration in the modern political landscape, but she also takes on the more optimistic task of revealing the linguistic diversity of the Mediterranean -- from mutually unintelligible dialects of Arabic in North Africa to unique turns of phrase that could not exist without the crossing of borders and the sharing of languages.

As someone who is naturally drawn to maps of all kinds, I was immediately drawn to her Mapping Journey series and the screen printed series of "constellations" that accompany it.  She begins each piece by intentionally getting lost near one of many clandestine passages for illegal immigrants (Marseilles, Ramallah, Bari, Rome, Barcelona and Istanbul, to name a few) and awaiting the chance appearance of a subject -- someone asking for directions, or perhaps offering to help her find her way.  She then has each subject trace the route by which they managed to arrive at their current location.  It is never a straight line, never a short journey from point A to point B.  It often involves years of waiting at checkpoints, waiting on paperwork, being turned away, deported, ready to do it all again to escape from whatever caused you to leave in the first place (Khalili never asks about motives, so we can only focus on the journey).  We never see the subject, either.  We only see a hand put pen to paper and hear a voice describe the journey, its dialectical qualities revealing bits and pieces about the narrator, but never enough to distract us from the core of the narrative.  

Although the screen printed "constellations" seem secondary to the video footage, they speak to the sense of geographical detachment that must accompany these neverending journeys from place to place.  One can exist in a place for decades without ever truly belonging, and this seems to be a perpetual dilemma for Khalili's subjects.  But the story of where they came from and how they got to where they are now, as documented quite clearly and without flourish through these "constellations," will always be an undeniable part of their identities.

What I find most interesting about Khalili's work, though, is its portrayal of a geography distorted by territorial disputes and political ambitions.  Although geography itself makes it nearly impossible to travel from place to place in a straight line (aircraft generally excluded), political borders have further complicated human travel for millennia,  continually molding the ways in which we are allowed to experience the world.

You can find out more about Bouchra Khalili's work at the Galerie of Marseille website or via this article in Frieze Magazine.