Basma al-Sharif: The Place Where I was Condemned to Live

The Place Where I was Condemned to Live is Basma al-Sharif’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. Basma’s work traverses many themes related to de Appel’s current focus: Her films and installation pieces raise questions related to the representation of domesticity, land and displacement. Basma’s work often blurs the boundaries between the personal and the political. She uses domestic settings to highlight how political and historical narratives infiltrate and affect private lives. There is a sense of unrest in these staged domesticities, that makes us question how personal our own settings are, and how impermanent and transient they might be. In her films images of landscapes are imbued with a selective history which is conveyed through various poetic and cinematic devices. One senses a distrust of images (especially) of landscapes as inherited and already inscribed with ideology.   

Three installations and a film are presented in the exhibition:

Trompe l’œil (2016)
In this installation three photographs from Lawrence of Arabia are reshot as part of a carefully constructed still life of uncanny domesticity. The three images are of Arabs enslaved by other Arabs taken during the period of the Arab Revolt, but only one of the images is free of its copyright and is therefore reproduced again as one of the many framed photographs and drawings that hang in a frieze-like arrangement in the room. A familiar space that hides within it pleasure, horror, and banality, the installation is composed of two large scale mural photographs, 38 reproduced archive images of various sizes, and a video loop in a carpeted space with three bergère chairs and a peace lily.

A Philistine (2019–23)
A Philistine is an installation centred around the reading of a fictional text. The story is broken into three genres: History, Fantasy, and Erotica, and is accompanied by a series of images. The viewer is invited to read the book in the space of the installation within an Ottoman-era style diwan. Re-inventing historical train routes that existed before the creation of Israel, the story takes us on one continuous voyage that proposes what such a journey would be like today. Borders are undone and the various inhabitants of the Levant and North Africa intertwine along a train journey that escapes the imminent future and questions the repercussions of the Nation State on the region.

CAPITAL (2023)
CAPITAL is a short film and photographic series which satirically explores how urban development and censorship are intertwined and driving a rise in Fascism in Egypt. It was shot at different locations including the CityLife residential complex in Milan, the Nile river-front in Cairo, residential neighbourhoods in Alexandria, and the construction sites of new cities—places where architectural histories are romanticised 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. 

Ouroboros (2017)
Ouroboros is a feature length film that opens on an endless cycle of destruction and rebuilding in Gaza. Alternating between an eerie panoptic gaze and sumptuous 16mm footage, the film voyages through five different landscapes as an homage to the besieged territory in order to hope beyond hopelessness. Chinook, an Indigenous language spoken by artist-filmmaker Sky Hopinka in the film, subtly and poetically collapses the two peoples and their struggle for liberation into one another.

Morning Circle (2024 in progress)
As part of the opening week, al-Sharif will be sharing research from her new work Morning Circle through a symposium and workshop that look critically at the ways in which Western cultural hegemony fails to see immigrants as integral to their populations, by taking one of the most vulnerable spaces: the Kindergarten, as a space of potential reform. More information about the events can be found in de Appel’s website.

During the runtime of the exhibition, the team of de Appel and others will read aloud the novella A Philistine daily. Ouroboros will screen daily (6:30–8pm) in the exhibition space.