Bouchra Khalili: The Mapping Journey Project

MoMA presents a complete installation of Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project (2008–11), in the Museum’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium.

In this multichannel video installation, eight undocumented immigrants tell the story of their migration from their original home to their current residence. Khalili met each subject by chance in Europe or the Mediterranean, and invited them to share their story on camera. Each video shows the subject’s hand drawing the lines of their journey on a political map of the region, while their faces remain unseen.

Khalili, who has worked in video, photography, drawing, and installation for the past 10 years, often deploys the tropes of documentary cinema in order to redirect the conventions by which citizens and subjects are asked to present themselves before the state.

Credit: Exhibition Overview from the MOMA website