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.
Three installations and a film are presented Trompe l’œil (2016), a mise en scene, archival photographs and a looping video questions who has the right to make and reproduce images; A Philistine (2019-2023), a work centered around a fictional story written by al-Sharif follows a train journey moving backwards in time through history. The story undoes geographical borders and incites new possibilities for Palestinian futures and desires; CAPITAL (2023), a short film and photographic series, satirically explores how urban development and censorship are intertwined and driving a rise in Fascism in Egypt. Basma’s film Ouroboros (2017) will be screened at the end of each day of the exhibition. 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 5 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 collapses the two peoples and their struggle for liberation into one another poetically.
Daily programme:
‣ There will be daily readings of the novella A Philistine by de Appel’s team and others;
‣ Ouroboros will screen daily at 6.30pm in the exhibition space.