“A video titled Milk and Honey.” These are the opening subtitles appearing on a plasma screen in the first room of Basma Alsharif’s solo exhibition in Paris. The following words, spoken in Arabic by a male narrator, introduce a story to come, of a woman’s lost love. They immediately remind me of Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), a love story from the Old Testament often interpreted as an allegory of the relationship between a people and a nation: “Your lips, my bride, drip like the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon.” Then, the narrative shifts to the making of the video and the admission of its failure: “What I was left with was a video with no images.” At this point, we are able to identify Alsharif’s own subjectivity behind the man’s voice. She describes all the material she collected while she was in Beirut, as well as her initial intention to create a “fictional love story set in the Middle East devoid of political context.” The video is surrounded by an extensive display of photographs that are all part of an installation titled The Story …