Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape are Often Migrating (2024)

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• 2024
• Basir Mahmood

Through the prism of cinema, the work traces the journeys of undocumented migrants across vast lands, exploring distance as a condition of diasporic lives just as it is a position intrinsic to the act of filming. The artist invited a crew from the cinema industry of his native Lahore—also known as Lollywood—to script and direct a series of sequences, the narrative of which would be loosely based on videos found online. Recorded by migrants as they travel from South Asia to Europe, such videos give insight into the harshness of their peregrinations—which often last for years and sometimes do not reach the intended destination—as well as offering practical pieces of advice to those who have yet to depart.