The Sharjah Art Foundation's annual exhibition runs until 14 January at the Old Al Diwan Al Amiri in Al Hamriyah. The event is usually known for hosting dozens of photographers. But this year, the event focuses on four photographers and a collective.
To discover:
Moroccan photographer Oumaima Abaraghe's work on the fragmentation and inaccessibility of Morocco's colonial archives. The artist cross-references a wide range of historical photographs, arranging them in strips and obscuring their original subjects. She sometimes reshapes these archive photographs in the form of silhouettes on translucent paper, underlining the difficulty of articulating Moroccan history through archives. She takes dozens of photographs showing the exploitation suffered by the country during its colonial period and mixes them with family photographs. This process bears witness to the role played by personal narratives in challenging the fragmented state of colonial archives.
Mohamed Mahdy, an Egyptian photographer renowned for his photographs of marginalised populations, focuses here on the fishing communities in the Al Maks district of Alexandria. The community is disintegrating in the face of the city's redevelopment and is threatened with mass eviction. It juxtaposes family photographs with images showing the destroyed houses and property scattered around the district.
The Franco-Algerian photographer Cléa Rekhou documents the daily lives of men in France's only rehabilitation centre for victims of domestic violence. The portraits, in cold tones, are full of nostalgia and regret.
Photo : Mohamed Mahdy.