al-Ushbuna
2016
digital video
3’ 37’’
Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_LN0hznp-A
At the other end of the Mediterranean, facing the Atlantic Ocean, lies Lisbon, Portugal capital city. For 450 years, since the beginning of the VIII century until 1147, the city, called al-Ushbuna in Arabic, was ruled by the Arabs. Islamic culture left numerous traces on the urbanistic structure of the city, on the Portuguese language, and on crafts, eg. the celebrated azulejos tiles. In the video-project al-Ushbuna I intend to celebrate the Islamic heritage and the contemporary Islamic presence in the city, mainly due to migrants from western Africa and Bangladesh. In the video the adhan, the call to prayer, hailing over Lisbon, seems to bypass centuries of history and misunderstandings, de-establishing rigid cultural identities, and symbolically undermining theories of cultural clash between Islam and the ‘West’.