Western views, Eastern eyes: Lensman Marwan Bassiouni soon at Lawrie Shabibi

Lawrie Shabibi is presenting New Western Views (Preview), the first solo exhibition in the region of Marwan Bassiouni, opening September 18. Featuring photographs taken between 2018 and 2022 from inside mosques across the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK, the exhibition offers a first look at Bassiouni’s ongoing international project.

- Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

The works reframe landscape photography through the lens of Muslim presence in the contemporary West. Each image centres on a window — an aperture into the outside world, so to say, only rarely found in purpose-built mosques. Through the portals, one can glimpse familiar Western landscapes: traffic junctions, supermarkets, apartment blocks and sports fields, among others.

But the views are not neutral. They are framed by interiors shaped by Islamic visual culture such as patterned tiles, rugs, wooden minbars, and other architectural elements drawn from the diverse communities constructing mosques in the West. Originating from places such as Bosnia, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Morocco, and Indonesia, these communities sometimes also transform everyday suburban spaces into makeshift prayer rooms. The result is distinctly Western scenes, viewed through distinctly Islamic frames.

The works on view are large in scale, composed with a deliberate attention to balance and spatial clarity. While photographic in medium, they depart from traditional documentary approaches. Each image is constructed with precise control over lighting, capturing both interior and exterior spaces inside a single frame. The careful calibration helps preserve architectural and atmospheric detail, resulting in compositions that are immersive. The photographs are not contrasts for their own sake. They project a visual and cultural life shaped by migration, adaptation, and inherited memory.