Abstract

“Those Who Will Join Us” reviews Bouchra Khalili’s multimedia installation The Circle (2023) in the context of Sharjah Biennial 15. The Circle was commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and won one of the biennial prizes, and suggests larger questions about what it means to be in the world, how we might remake the world, and what the role of art could be within this. The installation, which includes archival images and small televisions around a large two-channel video projection, is an investigation of the Movement of Arab Workers (MTA) and its theater groups, Al Assifa and Al Halaka. These agitprop t heater groups, formed by North African migrant workers and students like the rest of the MT A, were active in Paris and the south of France between 1973 and 1978. Khalili’s work particularly focuses on the 1974 presidential run of D jellali Kamal, a pseudonym for an anonymous Al Assifa member whose candidacy was seen as an extended public performance meant to reveal the ways in which migrants were denied civil rights.

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