Mosaic Rooms reopens with Circles and Storytellers, the first public UK solo exhibition by the esteemed French-Moroccan multidisciplinary artist and educator, Bouchra Khalili. Through her work, she suggests new civic imaginations and alternative ways of belonging and forming communities. On display will be the interconnected works The Circle Project (mixed media installation, 2023) and The Public Storyteller (16mm film and video, 2024). These works mark the conclusion of Khalili’s decade-long exploration into the overlooked history of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes (MTA) and its theatre groups, Al Assifa and Al Halaka. This investigation had its first iteration in 2017 with the film installation The Tempest Society, which premiered at documenta 14 (Athens/Kassel, 2017).
Active between 1973 and 1977, the MTA and its theatre groups were led by Maghrebi undocumented workers advocating for social justice and the freedom of artistic expression. Both The Circle Project and The Public Storyteller focus on the forgotten candidacy of Djelalli Kamal, a member of the MTA and Al Assifa, who ran for the French presidential election of 1974 as “the candidate of those who cannot vote.”
Al Assifa and Al Halaka (Arabic for “the circle” and “the assembly”),were central to the MTA’s activism. The circular formation is the guiding force behind the exhibited works and their display at Mosaic Rooms, manifesting the power of storytelling and performance in forming communities.
Press release from Mosaic Rooms
Image: Bouchra Khalili. Installation view of Circles and Storyteller at Mosaic Rooms, 2026. Photography by Andy Stagg. Image courtesy of Mosaic Rooms
