THE HAGUE.- Dürst Britt & Mayhew is presenting photographs from Marwan Bassiouni’s series New British Views, in which the artist captures the English landscape as framed by the windows of mosques and Islamic prayer rooms. Inspired by the long history of immigration in Britain following the country’s colonial past, Bassiouni spent time travelling across the UK to investigate how its landscape and architecture can be observed anew from the perspective of the religious sites of its Islamic communities. Through this journey, which echoes those undertaken by the artist in the Netherlands and Switzerland, Bassiouni challenges the stereotypes and clichés associated with the representation of Arab culture and Islamic religion within Western countries.
Bassiouni invites us to reconsider our viewpoints and questions the phenomenon of ‘othering’, which affected the artist first-hand whilst growing up with dual Egyptian and American-Italian heritage, and as a Muslim in a small secular town in Switzerland. In Bassiouni’s New British Views one is confronted with an unexpected representation of Islamic communities in the West, one where similarities and common experience are in focus and beauty is found in the harmonious co-existence of different spaces and perspectives.
Although the photographs appear to be precisely composed, they are unstaged and are the result of a selective framing of existing scenes. The artist uses multiple exposures in a single image, causing the foreground and background to appear equally focussed and creating an evenly distributed light. Through this technique Bassiouni situates his photographs in close relation to the Dutch Golden Age paintings of domestic spaces with views to the outside world. In doing so he eliminates the hierarchy between interior and exterior spaces, and also between the specific interiors of his images, known only to those who frequent these places of worship, and the exterior landscape that is shared by all.
Marwan Bassiouni (1985) holds a BA in photography from The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and a photographer CFC from the Photography School of Vevey (CEPV). In 2019, he had a solo exhibition at The Hague Museum of Photography and published the book ‘New Dutch Views’. His work has been exhibited at Bienne Festival of Photography (CH), Photobastei /VFG prize, Zürich (CH), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Circulation(s), Paris (FR), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Aperture (USA), Paris Photo (FR), Athens Photo Festival (GR).
Work by Bassiouni is held in private and public collections, including Kunstmuseum Bern, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Fenix Museum of Migration, AEGON Art Collection, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amsterdam UMC, Menzis Art Collection, KPMG Collection and Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration. Bassiouni is the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Student Grant, the Harry Pennings Prize, the Prix Circulation(s)-Fujifilm, and the Emerging Artist Grant of the Mondrian Fund.
Bassiouni’s work is currently on view in the exhibition ‘Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography’ at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and will soon be exhibited in group exhibitions at Museum Schloss Moyland in Germany and Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland.
