Director and artist Basir Mahmood divides his life and work between Lahore and Amsterdam. His works have been featured in numerous prestigious international institutions, including the Lahore Biennale, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In 2021, Mahmood received the prestigious Ammodo Tiger Short Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam for his film Sunsets Everyday, which addresses the harrowing theme of violence against women during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this work, as in his others, Mahmood, with his mastery of photography and video art, transforms both ordinary and extraordinary experiences into poetic sequences, exploring the complexity of everyday life and reflecting on everything that happens beyond the viewer’s gaze. His works navigate the boundaries of memory, identity, and migration, highlighting crucial themes such as empathy and inequality.

His most recent work, commissioned by In Between Art Film for Nebula, titled Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape are Often Migrating (2024), offers an innovative perspective on the challenges and obstacles faced by migrants in their journeys in search of a better life. It explores the theme of distance as an intrinsic condition of diasporic experiences and the filmic act. Collaborating with a film crew, Mahmood directed a series of sequences based on videos found online, recorded by migrants during their journeys from South Asia to Europe. These videos provide insight into the hardships these individuals are forced to endure, often without reaching the hoped-for destination, and offer advice to those who have yet to embark on the perilous journey.

In Mahmood’s work, the videos appear on cell phones or printed on sheets of paper, creating a narrative that does not directly represent the migrants’ experiences but evokes them through the actions of the crew members. They move exhausted under the scorching sun, in a dry and barren landscape, allowing viewers to immerse themselves and perceive the physical and psychological discomfort that migrants must face. The artwork blends with the environment of the Church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, where the natural landscape colors present in the video mix with the marble and frescoes of the sacred space, creating a visual and symbolic harmony. Additionally, the soundtrack, entirely produced in a studio, accentuates the discrepancy between what is seen and what is heard, between what appears close and what is distant. This divergence is central to Mahmood’s work, as he seeks to reveal truth through representation, highlighting the difference between the image as testimony and as creation. Basir Mahmood stands out as one of the most innovative artists of his generation, using art as a powerful tool to explore and discuss socially and politically significant issues.