The exhibition Constellations of Multiple Wishes was first presented in 2023 at The Mosaic Rooms, London. It contemplated past and present sites of struggle through entangled recent histories from the foundations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Agitating the relationship between time and memory, the exhibition refused the position of historian and instead reflected on personal and collective ideas and political desires that ripple and echo across time. The catalyst for the exhibition was the Southern Constellations exhibition series, initiated by the Moderna galerija, Ljubljana in 2019 and followed by different iterations in Gwangju, Rijeka, Skopje and Podgorica.
Constellations of Multiple Wishes: Along the Eastern Horizon is the latest iteration in the Constellations series. It focuses on deliberations on other Easts, beyond past colonial divisions, historical narratives and political alliances. The East as we know it has historically always been an elusive concept, constantly shifting or overlapping with other East(s) as, for example, the Balkans and the Middle East. These Orients were divided in the 19th century based on the Eurocentric colonial perspective: the Near East included the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, the Middle East stretched from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia, and the Far East covered East Asia, North Asia and Southeast Asia. The focus has thus always been on the stereotypical Other as the West has persistently imagined it: its incompletely developed antipode, a European burden, an irrational, violent people from the periphery of the Western world. This was also one of the pretexts used then and still used by the Western powers to justify intervention and control in the regions.
In the decades after World War II, the Easts largely emerged from the grip of colonialism, helped also by numerous anticolonial, antifascist, and emancipatory movements inventing new political languages of liberation rooted in solidarity and common struggle. Almost all of the newly liberated countries became members of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, many of these past alternatives appear to have failed us, and advocating for rights within current systems can feel futile. Even though Palestine is still a member of the NAM, this supposed “biggest peace movement in history” has not done anything to end the genocide in Gaza. Instead, the NAM has proved once again to have become one of the biggest political disappointments, unable to provide solutions to the struggles and tragedies of its member states – in Iraq, Libya, and Syria or today in Palestine. What remains are the grandiose historical ideas and unfinished utopias. But we do not have to fix the movement in time or render it obsolete. If the world that it was attempting to build anew has not arrived, perhaps today we are still working towards it.
Instead of dwelling in nostalgia and things lost in the currents of history, the works in Constellations of Multiple Wishes: Along the Eastern Horizon demand and seek out alternative routes, networks, railroads, and constellations. Setting up a dialog among archival materials, existing works and contemporary commissions, the works in this exhibition explore past imaginaries and words yet to be enacted, trace shared experiences, consider relationships and borderlines that have since been dissolved and that continue to displace. Laced with poetic interventions, they move through failure and absurdity, anxiety and solidarity, and hope and resistance. They do this by centering on the multiple Easts, their histories, narratives of building, and utopian visions of the future, while giving space to the voices that could not be heard lately.
Artists and collectives: Ala Younis, Alia Farid, Basim Magdy, Essa Grayeb, Free Palestine Poster Project, KURS (Miloš Miletić & Mirjana Radovanović), Larry Achiampong, Mona Rouhana Benyamin, Nika Autor, The Non-Aligned Art Collection Laboratory (Omar Bsoul, Kareem Dabbah, Inji Efflatoun, Mamdouh Kashlan, Choukri Mesli, Khudhair Shakirji).
Press release from Moderna galerija /Museum of Modern Art
Image: Exhibition view of Constellations of Multiple Wishes. 2024. Photography by Dejan Habicht. Image courtesy of Moderna galerija, Ljubljana.
