Bouchra Khalili is a French–Moroccan artist and scholar whose multidisciplinary practice develops collaborative strategies of storytelling with members of communities excluded from citizen membership. Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project was developed over three years across the Mediterranean migration routes, collaborating with refugees and stateless citizens from North and Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Her practice involves neither casting nor interviews; instead, she engages for long periods in listening to her collaborators so that they can devise and perform their narration. Each of the eight videos is made of one long static shot without cuts, focusing on a map, a hand holding a permanent marker, and the drawing in real-time of often years-long tortuous and perilous journeys. The Constellations Series, the closing chapter of The Mapping Journey Project, poetically reformulates and illuminates the video installation. The eight silkscreen prints translate the narrated journeys in the form of constellations of stars, referring to ancient astronomy as rooted in mythology. Khalili invites viewers to actively project themselves into the constellation to collectively imagine other ways to belong.
—Tracy Fenix
