Banal

About

Banal is a research-based exhibition which explores the aesthetic of everyday life in Kabul and Hamburg, where Moshtari Hilal has spent most of her life with relatives and family members. What seems banal within our everyday lives is a source of inspiration for Hilal, who observes, conceptualises, and creates a visual language. Everyday life, the objects and their arrangement produce familiarity and regularity. Her take on the aesthetic of everyday life is exhibited through drawings, video installations, collages and sketchbooks.

Moshtari Hilal is a visual artist and illustrator based in Hamburg, Berlin and currently in London. Hilal studied Middle-Eastern-Studies and politics in Hamburg and Berlin with a focus on postcolonial theory and feminist intellectual history. With her body of often semi-autobiographical work, she aims to generate an understanding of the complexity of marginalised identities and aesthetics, to offer an alternative visual language. Her drawings exist in between complex documentary and surreal symbolism, as well as in between theory and therapeutic detailed pattern work. Her analogue handwork is often exposed on digital platforms. Hilal has exhibited internationally in Germany, Afghanistan, Iran, Spain, Poland, Sweden, USA and Canada. www.moshtari.de @monmoshtari

This exhibition is curated by Shirin Fathi and Kathy Cho of To Whom This May Concern. TWTMC is a self-organised curatorial collective that functions as a multi-layered support structure. towhomthismayconcern.org @twtmc_

Please join us on 4 November 2-4PM for a panel discussion with artist Moshtari Hilal, curator Shirin Fathi and PhD candidate Paniz Musawi Natanzi, with photographer/film-maker Yumna al-Arashi.

Free and open to the public, please make an appointment by contacting info@towhomthismayconcern.org to see the exhibition.