Manifesta purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography.

Hassan Khan, EG

For Manifesta 8 Egyptian artist Hassan Khan presented a video, a textual piece and a sculpture, with the architectural context creating the framework for these pieces in relation to each other. MUSLIMGAUZE R.I.P., a single channel-video, was a partial portrait of social reality and its sublimation of Thatcherite England as an exotic product. A textual piece, CHAPTER II, plays with fiction and literary style to look at recent traumatic events. Banque Banister was a sculptural replica of an urban detail, all part of the artist’s ongoing investigation into the idea of presence.