In Arab societies everything is movement, even if, at times, mirrors stand still. While waiting, there are those who are used to the fleeting moment; to destruction and reconstruction; to the game of draughts at a makeshift table in the medina; to the rebirth of each day at a stall in the souk, displaying the objects for sale that had been sheltered the night before. For the street is also a landscape of ephemeral architecture. And knowing that nothing is eternal is part of wisdom.

This is captured by the contemporary artists who register population phenomena, such as migrations, or persecutions and imprisonment, but also the transitions that time exerts on societies and individuals. In this sense, photography and film offer unique testimonies of how sensibilities are shifting and changes occur between the visible and the invisible.

Ephemeral Landscapes of the Sun is the title of the collective show which won the 2024 edition of the NUR open call, organised by Casa Árabe and PhotoEspaña.  The exhibition revolves around a group of artists from Africa and the Middle East born in the 1980s and 1990s:  Roger Anis, M’hammed Kilito, Salih Basheer, Imane Djamil, Ebti Nabag, Yumna Al Arashi, Tanya Habjouqa, Abdallah Al Khatib and Leila Chaïbi..

In their photographs and audiovisual proposals, these artists explore perpetual movement from perspectives that form the backbone of the exhibition's chapters. Fleeing nature starts the tour, representing the iconic existence of the Nile River and the Maghreb oases, both currently under threat. Exodus evokes the hasty escapes caused by orphanhood and war (and persecution in Sudan), or the incessant departure of migrants from the African coast to the Canary Islands. Life in circles shows us the women who make a living with street stalls (like the tea ladies in Khartoum) or the citizens of a Palestinian refugee camp besieged by external conflicts who can find no way out. Finally, Mutations is a section that approaches the ways in which the tangible meets the ancestral, poetic and mystical worlds. A transformation which may enable abandoning our fears, relaxing questions of gender and identity and, ultimately, trusting in joy and in life.

Curators:
Analía Iglesias and Irene Díaz