Othmane Bengebara

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Portfolio

Rise & Set [working title]
Collecting Processions of the World

On-going

Transition (001–006), 2025
Tirage numérique sur dibond, 150cm x 90cm
Edition 1/7


What does it mean to witness a transformation in progress?
Set and Rise, Processions of the World is an artistic exploration of transformation, both celestial and human. Rooted in visual investigations and cosmopoetics, the project investigates how we experience and witness change through time, space, and affect. The work reflects on the sky as a historical and political witness, questioning how we archive and interpret fleeting moments of human existence.

Intimate and personal experiences exist on the margins of dominant narratives. Our emotions and affects play a role in shaping our political and social identities. As an artist, I want to confront and explore how these can be expressed and engaged with through contemporary art.
The sky is one of the oldest witnesses to our stories. A birth, a death, a revolution, a heartbreak; so often, we look up, seeking meaning in its shifting colours, its endless expanse. To collect skies, moons, and suns is to archive fleeting moments, to hold onto fragments of the intangible. Small objects–tokens of compressed time–become markers of a broader political relationship: who owns space, who predicts the future, and who controls the way time is structured. The politics of viewing, of seeing and being seen, remain at the core of these negotiations. If, as Santu Mofokeng suggests, “land” is a verb, then perhaps the sky is as well. To claim the sky is not just an act of looking up; it is an act of reclaiming time itself.

Arab and Islamic astronomical traditions also provide me with a critical framework. Historically, scholars charted the sky not just for scientific inquiry but as a way to structure daily life, spiritual practice, and governance. The lunar calendar, for instance, sets a temporal rhythm rooted in observation and relationality. Astrology is also deeply embedded in Arab intellectual history, not only in a predictive or divination way but as a tool of understanding the interplay between cosmic and earthly movements. It shaped political decision-making, agricultural cycles, and even medical practices, positioning the sky as both a metaphysical and pragmatic compass.

By revisiting these traditions, the project questions contemporary hierarchies of knowledge: How have colonial and capitalist frameworks redefined celestial time, stripping it of its embedded social and political meanings? Who is allowed to interpret the stars today, and for what purposes? The commodification of astrology in digital spaces (through algorithmic horoscopes and predictive AI) echoes older tensions between sacred, communal understandings of fate and its appropriation for profit or control. Through this lens, archiving the sky becomes an act of resistance, reclaiming celestial knowledge from structures that seek to fix, quantify, and privatise it.