Amin Zouiten: Grand Tour

In conjunction with Malmö Gallery Weekend: 26–28 Sept

Welcome to the opening of our autumn exhibition!

Grand Tour centres on two film works: the short film Vom Nil shot on mobile phones along the Nile in Egypt, and a silent black and white 16mm tableau of a solitary camel set on Öland’s Alvar.

Both works draw from two historical points and interrogate institutional depiction in relation to travel narratives as constructed fiction. First exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm earlier this year within the framework of the Bernadotte residency programme, the works are presented at Skånes konstförening in a new spatial setting.

In Vom Nil, the camera returns to the sites originally photographed by Queen Victoria of Baden (1862–1930), one of Sweden’s first amateur photographers, whose collection is archived in the Bernadotte Library. Named after Baden’s travelogue published in 1892, Vom Nil retraces these photographs from Port Said to Abu Simbel, following a route that parallels the emergence of mass tourism. Following the completion of the Suez Canal and the British occupation of Egypt, travel companies consolidated colonial routes, which in turn established the channels through which the site of ‘Egypt’ would be encountered in a Western imaginary. In the film, the periphery of these well-documented historical sites are reshot and reformulated for an estranged 21st century.

In the tableau, a lone camel appears on black-and-white 16mm film, situated beyond any specific geography or time. The scene was shot on Öland’s alvar and serves as an allusion to David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl’s (1628–1698) painting Camel with Driver (1688), which depicts the animal and its attendant in a landscape reminiscent of a fantasized Saharan topography. Today on display at Drottningholm Castle, it is thought to be the first depiction of a Muslim in Swedish art history, and inspired by an event in 1687 when Count Nils Bielke brought with him a dromedary and its Ottoman keeper to Sweden after the Battle of Mohács, Hungary. Investigating Ehrenstrahl’s decision to situate his subjects within this orientalist landscape, Zouiten was led to a near-identical painting by Jan Asselijn (1610–1652)––a contemporary of Ehrenstrahl––portraying a solitary camel. A connection which in turn inspired the 16mm film where the figure is omitted, mirroring Ehrenstrahl’s gesture of displacement through its geographical shift to the Alvar: a location with strong connotations to Swedish landscape painting of the 19th century.

At the opening, Emil Sandström performs a concert based on field recordings made during the filming of Vom Nil. The work weaves direct audio and processed recordings from the 20-day journey, presenting an alternative soundtrack that unfolds the making of the film. For this iteration, the piece centers on a 22-minute tracking shot from the revolving restaurant of the landmark Cairo Tower, performed as a structural echo, shadowing Baden’s travelogue and the false premise of coming ‘full circle’. The concert extends beyond the opening as a stage reactivated each day.

On Saturday, September 27, there will be a tour of the exhibition by Amin Zouiten.

About Amin Zouiten
Amin Zouiten is a Swedish-Moroccan filmmaker and artist educated at Malmö Art Academy and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His works and films have been shown at the Gothenburg Film Festival, Malmö Konsthall, Stockholm Film Festival, and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, among others.

About Emil Sandström
Engaged with the varying economies of image and language, the work of Emil Sandström moves across photography, sound, sculpture, and writing. Sandström has carried out studies at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, New Centre for Research and Practice, New York City, and Malmö Art Academy, graduating with an MFA in 2022. He is a current resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts, in Paris, France.

Curated by Tawanda Appiah

Special thank you to Malmö Konstmuseum and Filmform.

Image: Amin Zouiten, Vom Nil, film still, 2025. Photo by Christine Leuhusen.