aemi is proud to present this solo screening of films by DISSOLUTIONS artist in focus Basma al-Sharif curated by Diaa Lagan. The programme brings together seminal works by the filmmaker presented in chronological order to illuminate the evolution of Basma’s practice from earlier works to more recent explorations.
This screening will be followed by a conversation with Basma al-Sharif led by Diaa Lagan.
Curated for DISSOLUTIONS 25 by Diaa Lagan this programme seeks to articulate a trajectory that foregrounds Basma al-Sharif’s persistent engagement with the unresolved histories and shifting landscapes of West Asia, particularly those entangled with Occupied Palestine and Arab lands by Israel. Framing the artist as a ‘life-long witness’, Alsharif’s cinema registers both the physical terrain of geopolitical events in Madrid, Oslo, Sharm el-Sheikh and Gaza, and the metaphysical landscapes of irony, and longing. Through an intricate layering of voice, image, and memory, her films articulate a symbolic cartography that resists resolution while bearing witness to the fateful political promises that never materialised, yet irrevocably reshaped the region and its diasporic imaginaries. By tracing this body of work, the programme invites reflection on a practice that reclaims the power of speech and memory, whilst persistently negotiating the tension between belonging and displacement, irony and sincerity, dissolution and endurance.
FILM INFORMATION:
We Began By Measuring Distance, SD video, 19 minutes, 2009
The Story of Milk and Honey, SD video, 10 minutes, 2011
O, Persecuted, archival footage and 16mm film transferred to HD video, 12 minutes, 2014
A Field Guide To The Ferns, HD Transfer from 16mm, 9 minutes, 2015
Capital, HD video, 17 minutes, 2023
Total running time: 67 minutes
FILM SYNOPSES:
We Began By Measuring Distance, 2009, 19 minutes
Long still frames, text, language, and sound are woven together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements transition into political ones, examining how image and sound communicate his- tory. We Began by Measuring Distance explores an ultimate disenchantment with facts when the visual fails to communicate the tragic.
The Story of Milk and Honey, 2011, 10 minutes
A narration by an anonymous man details the failure of attempting to write an apolitical love story in Beirut. These details produce their own story through a delicate weaving of fact and fiction, a tale of defeat transforms into a multi-layered journey exploring how we collect information, perceive facts and recreate history to serve our own desires.
O, Persecuted, 2014, 12 minutes
O, Persecuted turns the act of restoring Kassem Hawal’s 1974 Palestinian Militant film, Our Small Houses, into a performance possible only through film. One that involves speed, bodies, and the movement of the past into a future that collides ideology with escapism.
A Field Guide To The Ferns, 2015, 9 minutes
“Primitive savagery meets the brutality of the modern world in Ruggero Deodato’s timeless slice of visceral horror”. Cannibal Holocaust is revived deep in the New Hampshire woods where apathy and violence are blurred.
Capital, 2023, 17 minutes
A Ventriloquist walks into a bar and orders a stiff drink.
The Bartender asks: will that be all?
The Dummy answers: Does it look like I can speak with this hand up my ass?
As Egypt syncs further into poverty and is overwhelmed by debt, new cities are being erected across the country and prisons fill with dissenting opinions. But who are these cities for and what desire or ambivalence do they inspire — and at what cost. Since it is currently not possible to safely speak about this: a ventriloquist, songs, and advertisements describe a seemingly bygone era of fascism.
Referencing Telefoni Bianchi films, a precursor to propaganda cinema under Mussolini, the legacy of building new capitals provides the material to express opinions and hope, through satire.
BASMA AL-SHARIF BIO
Working nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America, Basma al-Sharif – an artist and filmmaker of Palestinian heritage – explores cyclical political histories. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism with satire, doubt, and hope.
Basma received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009, and the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, the Visual Arts Grant from the Fundación Botín in 2010, Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, and is currently a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023. In 2024, Basma al-Sharif was nominated for the Aware Award. Al-Sharif’s major exhibitions include: The Hannah Ryggen Triennal, The Place I was Condemned to Live, de Appel Amsterdam, the 5th edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series for the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Mondays at MOMA, CCA Glasgow, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Berlin Documentary Forum, and Manifesta 8.
Her films have been screened in the international film festivals of Locarno, Berlin, Mar del Plata, Milan, London, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Yamagata amongst others. Her first exhibition at Imane Farès, On Love & Other Landscapes, with Yazan Khalili, was held in 2013. In 2025 Basma al-Sharif will be part of the Gotebörg Biennial. Her monograph Semi-Nomadic Debt-Ridden Bedouins will be published by Lenz in May 2025
DIAA LAGAN
Diaa Lagan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dublin, he received a BA from Faculty of Fine Art Aleppo, 2013 and an MA at Tehran College of Art in 2018, his practice is distinguished by metaphorical narratives rooted in mythology, history, and lived experience.
Mining his formative years in West Asia, Lagan negotiates unconsciousness through painting, drawing upon blurred objects and fragmented imagery to construct cryptic vignettes that oscillate between the personal and the universal. By embracing ambiguity, he evokes obscure and haunting narratives and miniatures that resonate with a sense of collective familiarity, allowing viewers to locate fragments of their own stories within his work. Diaa uses the letterforms moving through several states- the boundaries between painting, sculpture to reflect on aural histories, or transferral of knowledge through a floating language in Arabic poetry and culture, the power of word base on religious and ideology discourses.
Lagan’s recent exhibitions include Routes & Realms at Chester Beatty, Ireland (16 May – 7 September 2025), Calligravity at the Horse Gallery, Dublin, and the group exhibition Staying with the Trouble at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). His forthcoming solo exhibition, Kaas (Cup), will open at Starling Gallery, Limerick, in November 2025
