A visual and text based investigation led by Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili during many years following the traces left by the Mouvement des travailleurs arabes, a group fighting for the rights of the Arab workers in France at the turn of the 1970s.
Khalili focused her attention on the theatre groups Al Assifa and Al Halaka who were created in this political environment. The publication unfolds from The Circle (2023), a video installation shown for the first time at the 15th Sharjah Biennale (2023), at Macba (2023) and at the Luma Foundation (in Arles in 2023-2024 and Zurich in 2025).
The book is published in conjunction with Bouchra Khalili's exhibitions as guest visual artist of the Festival d'Automne in Paris in 2025.
Bouchra Khalili is a Moroccan-French artist born in Casablanca in 1975, based in Vienna, and working itinerantly. She studied film history at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and visual arts at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts in Paris-Cergy. Her multidisciplinary practice spans film, video, installation, photography, screen printing, textiles, and editorial platforms. Working with members of communities excluded from citizenship, she develops strategies of public storytelling at the intersection of the subjective and the collective, offering visual, sonic, and discursive hypotheses to explore new forms of belonging, based on collective emancipation narratives erased from official histories.
Khalili's work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2025), Luma Westbau (2025), Sharjah Art Foundation (2024), EMST (2024), Macba (2023), Bildmuseet (2021), Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (2019), Museum Folkwang (2018), Galerie Nationale du
Jeu de Paume (2018), MAXXI Museum (2018), MoMA (2016),
Palais de Tokyo (2015). She has also participated in many group exhibitions, such as the international exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2013 and 2024), the Sharjah Biennale (2011 and 2023), the Sydney Biennale (2012 and 2026), and
documenta 14 (2017). In 2023, her work
The Circle received the Grand Prize of the 15th Sharjah Biennale.
