Basma al-Sharif

Opening: 23rd March, 5pm – 8pm

We are pleased to present the third solo show by Basma al-Sharif at Imane Farès Gallery.

The exhibition space is transformed into a salon in which visitors are invited to read a short fictional text written by the artist titled a Philistine. The story describes a train journey from Lebanon through Palestine that ends in Egypt and challenges fixed geographical borders through time travel and eroticism. As part of the reading space photographs shot in the ex-Yugoslavia decorate the walls.

The exhibition also features al-Sharif’s latest work, Capital: a two-channel video installation shot at various locations including the CityLife residential complex in Milan, the Nile riverfront in Cairo, residential neighborhoods in Alexandria, and construction sites of new cities – places where architectural histories are romanticized even as they are being erased. Through these sites, al-Sharif explores the desires that drive politicians, urban planners, and their imagined ideal residents as well as how the resulting designs, with their disregard for the historical failures of colonial architecture, seek to transform and control the cultural and political landscape. The work hints at the limits of free speech and reveals how the legacies of fascism live on in the present.

A publication accompanies the exhibition with texts by Sofia Dati and Suzy Halajian.