Circles and Storytellers is the first UK solo exhibition by French-Moroccan multidisciplinary artist and educator Bouchra Khalili. Bringing together The Circle Project (2023) and The Public Storyteller (2024), the exhibition marks the culmination of Khalili’s decade-long research into the overlooked history of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes (MTA) and its theatre groups Al Assifa and Al Halaka.

Active between 1973 and 1977, these groups were led by Maghrebi undocumented workers and French students advocating for social justice and artistic freedom in France. Khalili’s works focus in particular on the forgotten candidacy of Djelalli Kamal, who ran in the 1974 French presidential election as “the candidate of those who cannot vote.” Taking the circle and the assembly as both form and method, the exhibition foregrounds storytelling and performance as tools for forging communities and imagining alternative civic futures.