New Western Views

Marwan Bassiouni
New Western Views: New Dutch Views #33 – New Swiss Views #3 – New British Views #6, all 2022 (from left to right)
Digital print mounted on dibond
76×62 cm

About the works

In his ongoing series ‘New Western Views’ Marwan Bassiouni captures the Western landscape as framed by the windows of mosques and Islamic prayer rooms. Bassiouni spent time traveling across The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and his native Switzerland 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 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’. In his New Western 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 in fact documents of existing situations which have been carefully selected by the artist. Bassiouni uses multiple exposures in a single image, causing the foreground and background to appear equally focused and creating an evenly distributed light. 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.

About the artist

Marwan Bassiouni (1985, Morges, Switzerland) holds a BA in photography from The Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and a photographer CFC from the Photography School of Vevey (CEPV). He is the recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Student Grant, the Harry Pennings Prize, the Prix Circulation(s)-Fujifilm and in 2022 was named as FOAM Talent. In 2021 one of his photographs was selected for the ‘Gallery of Honour of Dutch Photography’ at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. His work has been reviewed in publications such as The New Yorker, Die Zeit, The Guardian, Frieze, Artforum, the British Journal of Photography, Lens culture, Aperture, and FOAM Magazine.

In 2019, Bassiouni had a solo exhibition at the Hague Museum of Photography and published the photo book New Dutch Views. His work has been exhibited at Kunsthaus Zürich, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Z33 Hasselt, Sharjah Art Foundation, Shanghai Center of Photography, Three Shadows Photography Center Beijing, FOAM Amsterdam, Museum Het Nieuwe Domein Sittard, Cultuurhuis De Warande Turnhout, Museum IJsselstein, Workplace London, Rencontres de la Photographie Marrakech, Bienne Festival of Photography, Festival Circulation(s) Paris, Athens Photo Festival, Fotofestival Naarden, Si Fest Savignano.

Bassiouni’s work is held in private and public collections including Kunsthaus Zürich, Kunstmuseum Bern, International Center of Photography New York, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Amsterdam Museum, Museum Het Nieuwe Domein Sittard, FENIX Rotterdam, Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs, Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs, AEGON, Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam UMC, Dutch National Bank, Eneco, KPMG and Menzis.

About the works

About the artist

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