Culturescapes 2025 Sahara

For its 18th edition in 2025, the Swiss biennial Culturescapes stays in the Sahara, thus expanding its focus over the two consecutive editions for the first time in its 22-year history. The expansion of the Sahara, which has reshaped its natural and cultural landscape, and the expanding presence of African cultures and voices in the global dialogue are just a few reasons.

African artists, philosophers, and elders see the Saharan desert as simultaneously a non-conventional metaphysical space that assumes a transcendental nature (according to the prominent Libyan writer, Ibrahim Al-Koni) and a geo-cultural space where Africa can reconcile with its history and overcome the colonial divide embodied in this desert (as once written by the French-Algerian professor Benaouda Lebdai).

Culturescapes 2025 Sahara follows the flows and movements of sands, dwellers, and ecosystems in and around the Sahara to trace how knowledge hierarchies have been constructed and maintained and how to effectively dismantle and unlearn them in Africa and Europe (and beyond).  One such flow is Languages and Movements, which follows movements of various African and (post)colonial languages and cultures, listens to verbal and non-verbal languages of movements, inquires into changing migration routes through the Sahara, and highlights the role of the Black diasporas. The other one, Sources and Resources, envisions a world where resources are viewed as sources of life, knowledge, tradition, innovation, and more. In this vision, ownership and non-exhaustive care over them, in the hands of their people, open up new possibilities, benefiting local societies.

Culturescapes 2025 Sahara opens with the recent production of the Moroccan choreographer Radouan Mriziga, Magec / the Desert, in Kaserne Basel on October 9. The opening days consist of the conference Decolonize festivals that addresses questions of power and representation in the global system of cultural festivals, on October 10; two city walks Basel Colonial, where the Center for African Studies invites to explore the diverse connections between Basel and the African continent, on October 11; and a solo performance by the Ivorian choreographer, Nadia Beugré, Épique! For Yikakou, on October 12.

The program continues with a retrospective on the French-Lebanese director Jocelyne Saab in the Stadtkino Basel. Literaturhaus Basel will host two double evenings with Ibrahim Al-Koni and Mohammed Alnaas – two generations of authors from Libya—as well as Egyptian illustrator Deena Mohammed and Tunisian author Amira Ghenim. 

A photo exhibition, The Tea Ladies of Sudan, by Canadian-Sudanese photographer Ebti Nabag, opens in Unternehmen Mitte, and the installation Jaimitna by Western Saharan activists is hosted at the Markthalle in collaboration with terre des hommes schweiz. 

Further musical highlights include concerts by Ndagga Rhythm Force with their long-awaited new album Khadim at the Kaserne Basel and three concerts by Emel Mathlouthi with her electro-pop manifesto for female emancipation MRA.

A two-day autumn symposium “Transmission for Transformation: On Artistic Pedagogies and Democracy” is organized in collaboration with the Institute Art Gender Nature of Basel Academy of Art and Design, FHNW, and Skowhegan. 

On November 29, in the Museum Tinguely, Culturescapes 2025 Sahara closes with the Performance Day Languages and Movements with Prince Toffa, Christian Etongo, Kettly Noël  (and Kojack), and Yara Mekawei.

The festival brings together nearly 90 visual artists, performers, dancers, theater companies, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and thinkers in a seven-week program that extends beyond Basel to other cantons in Switzerland.

Culturescapes 2025 Sahara is co-curated by Jurriaan Cooiman and Kateryna Botanova. 

For further questions or information, please get in touch with info [ at ] culturescapes.ch.