Trembling Landscapes

*The geographical term Middle East is not neutral, but Eurocentric and has its origin in colonialism.

Watch the exhibition trailer:

Guest curator Nat Muller takes you on a virtual tour around the exhibition:

Mohamad Hafeda

For Sewing Borders, Lebanese artist Mohamad Hafeda collaborated with people who have experience of being displaced, for example, because they had to flee their country. They set new boundaries on maps with sewing machines. In this way, countless unofficial, personal boundaries are made visible. In this interview, Hafeda explains what fascinates him so much about borders.

Larissa Sansour

What could peace between Israel and Palestine look like? Artist Larissa Sansour uses science fiction to comment on years of negotiations surrounding the conflict. In her film Nation Estate, we see a Palestinian state in the form of a gigantic, futuristic skyscraper. Sansour tells Eye about the background of the work. She also shows how her identity as a Palestinian woman influences her art.

Hrair Sarkissian

Hrair Sarkissian built a scale model of the apartment complex in Damascus where he grew up. The artist has since left Syria, but his parents still live in the same building, where they are threatened by war daily. In the film Homesick, you can see how Sarkissian destroyed the model. Did that act offer relief? He speaks to Eye about it.

Jananne Al-Ani

During the Gulf War, Iraq's landscape was portrayed on TV as little more than an empty desert. For artist Jananne Al-Ani, who grew up there, this one-sided representation was astonishing: it is one of the most fertile areas in the world and the landscape is full of traces of ancient civilizations. In her work Shadow Sites she shows what lies behind the apparent emptiness that Western media showed.

Heba Y. Amin

Artist Heba Y. Amin travelled from Nigeria to Europe for five months, along trade routes described as early as the eleventh century in the text “Kitab al-Masalik wal-Mamalik” (Book of Roads and Kingdoms). The routes are widely used today by migrants travelling from Africa to Europe. Amin recorded the journey using a theodolite, a tool used for land surveying. In this interview, she talks about the project, which takes a critical look at the way in which migrants are portrayed in the media.

Ali Cherri

Geological fault lines converge under Lebanon, the homeland of artist Ali Cherri. This can lead to severe earthquakes. In his film The Disquiet, the artist makes a connection between natural disasters and political unrest. After much of Beirut was destroyed by an explosion in August of 2020, the work took on an unexpected new meaning. The title of the exhibition - Trembling Landscapes, after another work by Cherri - was suddenly painfully topical.

Wael Shawky

The inhabitants of the Egyptian village of Al Araba Al Madfuna strongly believe in supernatural powers, which they use to find pharaoh gold and other treasures in the ground. Artist Wael Shawky visited the village and experienced miraculous things, such as children suddenly speaking in a different voice - just like in The Exorcist. His fascination with the place, where the spiritual and the terrestrial merge seamlessly, led to the film trilogy Al Araba Al Madfuna. The second part of this trilogy is part of the exhibition.

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

In their short film Waiting for the Barbarians, artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige combine panoramic shots of Beirut with a poem by C.P. Cavafy. The poem poses that a common enemy can serve as a solution to social unrest. But what if the barbarians don't come? Hadjithomas and Joreige created the work in 2013, in response to xenophobia and emerging nationalism. It hasn't lost any of its urgency since.

Take a virtual tour through the exhibition: