Mohamed Bourouissa is a portraitist of our time. In his work he tells the stories of people. Not those who are in any case in the full glare of publicity, of politics, art and history, rather those who are ‘next door’: ordinary people whose life-stories tell of exclusion, invisibility – but of courage, too, and new perspectives.

In his first solo exhibition in Switzerland, Bourouissa invites the audience on a journey, from Blida in Algeria, where he was born, via the Parisian suburbs, where he now lives, to Osnabrück in Germany, where the eventful life of his aunt Noubia Meyer drew to a close. Films, objects, AI animations and photographs: every room brings together groups of works as a stop on this journey, incorporating them within an immersive spatial experience.

Sometimes the works are documentary in nature, sometimes fictional, but they are always built upon lived experience. They report on the life of Bourouissa and of those who are close to him: friends and acquaintances in the Parisian banlieues, a long-term patient at the psychiatric clinic in Blida, and members of his family and his community. Above all, Noubia Meyer, his aunt, who migrated to Germany from Blida as a sex worker and who made over her photographic archive to Bourouissa. Pour noubia is dedicated to her – and at the same time to all those whose stories too often remain unseen.