Khalid Albaih. The migration season in the North
From 09 November 2024 to 23 February 2025
On the occasion of the Peace Festival, the exhibition Khalid Albaih. The migration season in the North will be free to all visitors from 09/11/2024 to 30/11/2024.
The exhibition
Curated by:
Elettra Stamboulis
An initiativ promoted by:
Municipality of Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei, Alleanza Cultura
Under the patronage of:
Amnesty International, CCDC – Cooperativa Cattolico-democratica di Cultura
In collaboration with:
ARC – Artists at Risk Connection, Festival della Pace, Mirada
Media Partner:
Giornale di Brescia
Visit with:
Abbonamento Musei Lombardia
The exhibition constitutes the fifth stage of the research path that Fondazione Brescia Musei has undertaken as part of the Brescia Peace Festival. Over the years, under the curatorship of Elettra Stamboulis, there have been solo exhibitions of Zehra Doğan (We will also have better days. Works from Turkish prisons, 2019), Badiucao (China is not near. Works by a dissident artist, 2021) and Victoria Lomasko (Victoria Lomasko. The Last Soviet Artist, 2022), as well as the exhibition Until We Are Free (2023), a group show of works by Iranian artists Sonia Balassanian, Farideh Lashai, Shirin Neshat, Soudeh Davoud and Zoya Shokoohi, which was curated by Ilaria Bernardi.
The title of the exhibition echoes the title of the novel of the same name by the Sudanese writer Altayib Salih, whose narrative voice acts as the leitmotif of the exhibition project. For Sudanese literature, but African literature in general, this novel with its evocative title constitutes a pivotal novel for post-colonial culture.
The Season of Migration to the North retraces Albaih’s artistic career, presenting for the first time a critical solo exhibition of his decades-long work as a dissident and exiled artist. The installation, while taking up some works already realised in particular for the New York and Copenhagen exhibitions, dialogues with the city of Brescia and its peculiarities, consecrating from a museum point of view the artist, who is also directly involved from a curatorial point of view for some of his site-specific installations. The red thread of the reflection of Khalid Albaih, ICORN guest artist in Copenhagen (International Cities of Refuge Network) and fellow in the USA for the Artists at risk association (a branch of PEN international, the international institution that protects freedom of expression), is the investigation of the different facets that accompany the ‘season of migration to the North’: from the identification of a place as home to the confrontation with the foreigner, from the vision that the so-called West (a category that is no longer geographical, but ideological) has of Africa, to the marks that each journey imprints on the memory.
Khalid Albaih
Khalid Albaih’s artistic practice is rooted in drawing, through a vast production characterised by great clarity and immediacy. His works first appeared online under the pseudonym ‘Khartoon’, combining the word ‘cartoon’ with the Sudanese capital ‘Khartoum’. Edgy and direct, his illustrations went viral and led Khalid Albaih in 2016 to take part, along with ten other artists, in The Story of Civil Rights is Unfinished project, which travels across the United States to observe the reaction of its inhabitants to citizens of other countries. In 2019, the German Cultural Institute in Khartoum commissions Albaih with a collective project that results in the production of an art book focused on the history of Sudan, in the production of which thirty Sudanese artists participate. In 2020, his online project When The World Closed offers public and protected spaces to artists from all over the world who are unable to produce or exhibit their works, while in 2022 he arrives in Kassel for Documenta and presents the sound installation The Walls Have Ears, dedicated to asylum seekers in Denmark.
The artistic research of Khalid Albaih, currently exiled in Oslo, is inextricably intertwined with a curatorial approach and a tension towards activism. His works render analytical visions of the contemporary landscape, involving a vast network of collaborations, which in Brescia reaches as far as the Academy of Fine Arts, the School of Comics and the citizenship itself.
Information
Tickets
Cinema + Exhibition, your double experience with a special discount!
Cinema Nuovo Eden ticket holders can visit temporary exhibitions at the Santa Giulia Museum at the reduced rate.
Holders of a ticket for the Santa Giulia Museum’s temporary exhibitions can access a screening at the Cinema Nuovo Eden at the reduced rate.
Staying in Brescia is worthwhile!
For the guests of HB Hotel (Hotel Vittoria, Hotel Regal, Hotel Leonessa, Hotel Master, Hotel Igea), Federalberghi (Hotel Al Poggio Verde, Hotel Ambasciatori) and Areadocks Boutique Hotel the entrance ticket is at a reduced rate upon presentation of the valid voucher issued by the hotel at the cash desk.
Pricing
Conventions
Discover the benefits for those who keep their museum admission tickets!
Keep your admission ticket for the exhibition Khalid Albaih. The Season of Migration to the North and you will be entitled to a discounted entrance fee at Gallerie D’Italia, Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, Palazzo Maffei Casa Museo and Fondazione Palazzo Te.
Similarly, visitors who present a Gallerie d’Italia, Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, Palazzo Maffei Casa Museo or Fondazione Palazzo Te ticket issued in the current year at the ticket office of one of the Brescia Civic Museums will be entitled to a concessionary entry to the exhibition.
Opening times
Winter hours (1 October – 31 May):
- Mondays (non-holidays): Closed
- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
- Last admission: 5.15 p.m.