At the 36th São Paulo Bienal, Moroccan artist Laila Hida presents Sangeh Khara—a video installation that unfolds as an immersive environment, inviting viewers to slow down, recline, and experience the desert as a living archive of memory, movement, and resistance. Brendon Bell-Roberts speaks to the artist.
Installation view of Sangeh Khara by Laila Hida at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
In Sangeh Khara, Laila Hida constructs not just a film, but a space of encounter. Built around a tent-like scenography inspired by nomadic structures of southern Morocco, the work reconfigures how we relate to the moving image. Draped in melhifa cloth—fabric traditionally worn by women in the Sahara—the installation invites visitors to lie down, listen, and enter a slower rhythm of seeing.
Shot on 16mm film, Sangeh Khara explores the desert as a site of circular histories, material exchange, and living memory. Hida’s poetic yet political approach transforms landscape into language, and space into a collective gesture of resistance and care.
Brendon Bell-Roberts: Sangeh Khara is both a film and an environment. What drew you to creating a work that people must physically inhabit rather than simply view?
Laila Hida: I’ve always been drawn to building spaces rather than objects. I’m interested in how we can experience art through the body—through rest, slowness, or stillness. In Sangeh Khara, viewers lie down under a canopy of melhifa fabric, surrounded by sound and light. The installation echoes nomadic architecture in the oases, where shade is essential. I wanted to offer a space that envelops the viewer—a place to breathe, to see differently.
The work forms part of your ongoing project Le Voyage du Phénix. How does this chapter connect to the broader journey?
Le Voyage du Phénix began in 2016 through residencies in the oases of southern Morocco and Mauritania. Each chapter emerges from time spent in these landscapes and with the communities who inhabit them. What connects them is a shared question: how do we free the desert from the Orientalist image that has defined it for centuries? My films respond to those inherited representations through fragments, circular narratives, and lived experiences that resist the linear gaze of colonial storytelling.
Installation view of Sangeh Khara by Laila Hida at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
Your work deals with political and postcolonial histories, yet your tone remains poetic and contemplative. How do you balance those forces?
Poetry can be political. We live in a time of oversaturation—too many images, too much information, too much noise. Choosing slowness and intimacy becomes an act of resistance. My work doesn’t announce messages; it asks questions. The poetic allows me to speak about violence or history in ways that remain human, emotional, and open. It’s about finding a space between clarity and silence, where people can feel rather than just understand.
You chose to film on 16mm—a conscious, almost nostalgic decision in a digital age. Why this format?
16mm offers a different rhythm. Every frame matters, every shot is deliberate. It brings humility to image-making. For Sangeh Khara, it felt important to work within a material economy—one that reflects the ecology of the desert itself. The fragility of film mirrors the fragility of the landscapes I’m filming. It’s also a way to resist the overproduction of digital imagery—to return to something tactile, imperfect, and honest.
The melhifa fabric feels central—both visually and symbolically. Can you speak about its significance?
The melhifa is a four-metre cloth worn by women in southern Morocco. It’s practical, protective, and deeply cultural. What fascinates me is its circular life—it’s worn, resold, repurposed into tents. It moves through markets and generations. In the installation, it becomes both skin and shelter, transforming the gallery into a breathing space. It holds memory, economy, and care—everything that survives through touch and reuse.
Installation view of Sangeh Khara by Laila Hida at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
The desert often appears in your work as both subject and metaphor. What does it represent for you today?
The desert is a paradox—it looks empty, but it’s full of life, stories, and connections. It’s also a place where reality and imagination overlap. Over time, I’ve come to see the desert less as a landscape and more as a living network—between humans, animals, materials, and myths. Working there taught me patience. The desert refuses to be rushed or fully known, and I think that’s what makes it such a powerful metaphor for art and for life.
Presenting Sangeh Khara in São Paulo creates a dialogue with other Global South contexts. What does that mean to you?
It’s significant. Brazil has its own complex history of migration, survival, and transformation. Showing the work here extends the conversation beyond Morocco—it’s about shared sensibilities across the Global South. Sangeh Khara speaks to how we inhabit the world together, how materials and images migrate and find new forms elsewhere. The Bienal creates space for those connections to surface, quietly but powerfully.
Laila Hida’s presentation, Sangeh Khara, is on view at the 36th São Paulo Bienal until 11 January 2026. For more information, visit 36.bienal.org.br.
