Artists selected for the creative residency of the “Culture Moves Europe” program at Casa Árabe in Cordoba 

Salima Hamrini and Nasri Sayegh are the two artists selected to take part in the creative residency program “Contemporary Reflections on the Legacy of Al-Andalus through Experimental Photography,” which will be taking place at Casa Árabe’s headquarters in Cordoba from February to March of 2025. 

This initiative forms part of the program ”Culture Moves Europe” (Creative Europe)* implemented by the Goethe Institut with the objective of promoting mobility amongst those artists and cultural professionals residing in Creative Europe countries.

During the two-month residency, Salima and Nasri will research the features of the Al-Andalus Legacy which they identified in their proposals, along with professionals from the world of photography and the cultural sector. In addition, another of the pillars of this creative residency will be the contact these artists make with the city of Cordoba’s local cultural and social fabric.

Salima Hamrini
Salima Hamrini was born in Casablanca, Morocco. Driven by her passion for photography and images, she moved to Berlin, where she currently lives, to study with a scholarship for visual creation awarded by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) and the Goethe-Institut.

A self-taught photographer since 2015, her visual language straddles the boundaries between documentary photography and film world aesthetics. She works primarily with digital photography but also includes text in her images to tell contemporary urban narratives. Salima’s photography revolves around intimate human experiences within societies riddled with injustice, absence, memory and oblivion.

Her project selected for this residency is “In My Heart, I Know You | A Culinary Ode to Al-Andalus.”

The creative artist-in-residency program will allow Salima to explore, research and capture the essence of Al-Andalus to be found in the recipes, flavors and smells of Cordoba’s gastronomy. To achieve this, she will be holding meetings with local women, chefs, historians and the local community, in a vindication of the common sensory collective memory across the two shores of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Nasri Sayegh
Nasri Sayegh, a French-Lebanese visual artist, DJ, embroiderer and performer, lives between Paris and Beirut.
He entered the world of visual arts in 2016. His work combines photography, collage and cross-stitch, resulting in blurry and furtive images which feel almost fleeting. Drawing from his personal visual archives, Sayegh alters and deconstructs images to endow them with narratives more in line with his fantasies and longings.

In film, he has been directed by Christian Merlhiot, J. Youssef and Jocelyne Saab. In theater, he has worked with Saâdane Afif, Rabih Mroué, Zoukak Théâtre and the Kabakovs, among many others. In 2020, he created “radiokarantina,” a pandemic-era art platform that has since become a sounding board for the tragedies which have ravaged Lebanon and Palestine.

For this residency program, he has selected the project “Fragments of a lost Nuba / Reclaiming Al-Andalus. And/or how I forgot my deodorant in Beirut and met Zyriab on a patio in Cordoba.”

From Beirut to Cordoba, passing through Paris, the artist embarks on a journey to follow Zyriab’s footsteps. Driven by his fascination with the production/deconstruction of the image, Nasri attempts to capture unusual moments and encounters. Will his queer, anti-Orientalist viewpoint lead the artist to the heart of the Nawbah? In the artist’s own words, “Nothing is more beautiful than expectations.”

The artist-in-residency project was selected in accordance with the conditions of Culture Moves Europe, a project financed by the European Union and executed by the Goethe-Institut.