The Circle: Timeline for a Constellation
Bouchra Khalili
Book Works
English
Hardcover
168 pages
190× 275 mm
2026
ISBN 9781912570300
The Circle: Timeline for a Constellation concludes Bouchra Khalili’s ten-year investigation into the Arab Workers Movement (MTA), focusing on its theatre troupes, Al Assifa (the tempest) and Al Halaka (the circle, the assembly). Formed by undocumented North African workers in France (1973-1978), the MTA’s theatre groups were central elements in Khalili’s works The Tempest Society (2017) and the book of the same title (Book Works, 2019), the sound piece An Audio Family Album (2020) and the multi-screen film installations The Circle, and The Storytellers (2023) and The Public Storyteller (2024).
The publication brings together archival materials, chronological elements, essays, interviews with members of Al Assifa and Al Halaka, performers from The Circle, and a contribution and conversations with the artist. This ‘constellated’ examination highlights the MTA theatre troupes’ pioneering exploration of emancipatory belonging, agency, and artistic expression as fundamental human rights. These experiments culminated in the 1974 presidential candidacy of Djellali Kamal, an anonymous member of Al Assifa. Despite remaining anonymous, Kamal’s candidacy symbolized the potential for a new, egalitarian community, brought to life through performance.
(Source: https://shop.mosaicrooms.org/product/the-circle-timeline-for-a-constellation)
About the Artist
Bouchra Khalili is a Moroccan-French artist born in Casablanca in 1975, based in Vienna, and working itinerantly. She studied film history at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and visual arts at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts in Paris-Cergy. Her multidisciplinary practice spans film, video, installation, photography, screen printing, textiles, and editorial platforms. Working with members of communities excluded from citizenship, she develops strategies of public storytelling at the intersection of the subjective and the collective, offering visual, sonic, and discursive hypotheses to explore new forms of belonging, based on collective emancipation narratives erased from official histories.
Khalili’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2025), Luma Westbau (2025), Sharjah Art Foundation (2024), EMST (2024), Macba (2023), Bildmuseet (2021), Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (2019), Museum Folkwang (2018), Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume (2018), MAXXI Museum (2018), MoMA (2016), Palais de Tokyo (2015). She has also participated in many group exhibitions, such as the international exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2013 and 2024), the Sharjah Biennale (2011 and 2023), the Sydney Biennale (2012 and 2026), and documenta 14 (2017). In 2023, her work The Circle received the Grand Prize of the 15th Sharjah Biennale.
https://www.mor-charpentier.com/artist/bouchra-khalili/
(Source: https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=12654&menu=0)
About the Publisher
Book Works was established in 1984 ‘to advance education for the benefit of the public in the visual arts, particularly books which may be recognised as art works in their own right. Set up to commission, produce and publish art works, organise exhibitions, lectures and workshops, and to provide instruction, education and training in all aspects of the visual arts including books. Book Works will act as a national resource for artists’ books and those involved in publishing in the arts; distribute art books to a wide and varied audience; and engage, provide, train and employ artists, writers, editors, designers and those with appropriate skills of all kinds and to commission them to produce new work.
https://bookworks.org.uk/
(Source: https://bookworks.org.uk/publishing/about)
