Opening this week, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents an exhibition by Moroccan-French artist Bouchra Khalili (b. 1975). Featuring two major multimedia installations produced 15 years apart, The Mapping Journey Project (2008–2011) and The Circle Project (2023), the exhibition highlights personal accounts and overlooked or suppressed narratives that challenge dominant perceptions of migration in the Mediterranean region.

“I’m very interested in the stories that aren’t in the “archives”. This might seem paradoxical, as I’m often described as an artist who works with archives, but in reality I do the opposite: I rather work on the basis of what is missing from the archives.” Bouchra Khalili.

Bouchra Khalili’s installation The Mapping Journey Project played a prominent role in the main exhibition Foreigners Everywhere at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Across eight large screens the piece presents an alternative mapping of the migration that takes place around the Mediterranean. The work is a new acquisition for the Louisiana’s collection, and this is the first time it is shown in Denmark.

In The Mapping Journey Project, eight people narrate their journeys, which are forced by political and economic circumstances. The journeys span from Northern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, across the Mediterranean, and over European borders. As each person recounts their difficult and often years-long journey, they trace their route on a map with a marker.

The Circle Project is based on the artist’s many years of research into the organisation Mouvement des travailleurs arabes, MTA (the Movement of Arab Workers) which existed in France in 1973–1978. The organisation fought for the rights of migrants, including through the work of two theatre groups called Al Assifa and Al Halaka. Using artistic expression as a creative “weapon” in their public performances, the theatre groups shone a light on issues such as work permits, racism, and poor housing. Their most notable performance took place in 1974, when, under the pseudonym Djellali Kamal, an anonymous member of the Al Assifa theatre group ran as a candidate for the immigrant workers (who had no right to vote) in the French presidential elections.