Basma al-Sharif's Disorienting Exhibition Blends Pornography, Colonial Critique

Palestinian artist Basma al-Sharif's exhibition 'a Philistine' at Imane Farès in Paris, through 13 July, combines a reading room with 1970s furnishings and photographs from the former Yugoslavia, alongside a fictional text in Arabic, English, and French that traces three generations of Palestinian women from 1935 to a borderless present. The text, which cannot be removed from the gallery, includes pornographic line drawings and culminates in a multispecies orgy on the banks of the Nile. A second work, 'Capital' (2022), is a two-channel video featuring phone footage of luxury housing developments in Italy and Egypt, a radio interview with an unidentified Egyptian politician, and a scene of a woman masturbating to a male Italian voice describing a new residential community. The exhibition explores themes of statelessness, postcolonial sexuality, and contemporary architectural planning, probing the fragile boundaries between public and private life.