I Exist: Operation Burkini

Taous, 40 (left) and Fatiha, 55 (right) are part of the “Operation Burkini” Citizen Alliance, an activist movement in Grenoble, where groups of women wearing “burkinis” swim in public pools. They have been kicked out, banned, and fined for their activism. Layered over footage on the Seine at the location of the Paris massacre of 1961, where French police turned on their own citizens, Algerians marching against a curfew that applied to them alone. Some were shot, others drowned in the river. For years the killings were not acknowledged. In 2001 the city fixed a plaque to the Pont Saint-Michel, “to the memory of the many Algerians killed.” Many. The state has never given a number.

The audio recordings share conversations with eight French Muslims who collaborated on the project: Fatiha, Taous, Ines, Nadia, Yasmine, Hagar, Rym, and Jihane.

Muslim women can have a modern interpretation of Islam and their own vision for feminism. Why is the policing of women’s bodies continuously institutionalized in the French state? These questions guided a multidisciplinary anthropological, journalistic, and visual investigation into the lives of French Muslim women and girls across France. Audio testimonies were gathered and cut into ethnographic soundscapes; video and still portraits were made in collaboration with the participants, mixing a recreation of memories, absurdist commentary, and traditional portraiture.

Single-channel video installation, 2020.
Part of a NOOR group project tackling Islamophobia in Europe, I Exist: European Stories of Islamophobia; Melkweg Expo, Amsterdam, 2020.
Contact for the full edit and more visuals.