Syrian-French artist Bady Dalloul’s Land of Dreams at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo invites viewers into a world where migration, memory and fiction collide.
Bady Dalloul, a Syrian-French artist born in Paris in 1986, is renowned for his storytelling approach, blending historical events, migration and his Arab heritage with elements of fiction. His latest exhibition – Land of Dreams, part 32 of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum’s MAM Projects – marks the first chapter of a nomadic series Dalloul is planning. It reflects his lifelong interrogation of power, colonialism and identity through intricate assemblages, drawings and films.
The Mori Art Museum exhibition offers an intimate look into Dalloul’s world, centring on two key elements: a full-scale replica of his first home upon arriving in Japan in 2014, and before that, strikingly detailed figurative drawings within matchboxes, illuminated against a dark blue wall. They function as both diary and archive, exploring translocation and memory at an almost microscopic scale. The exhibition invites viewers to step into the fragmented, layered experience of relocation, displacement and reimagination. Narratives from his personal migration journey, as well as global migration histories, such as those of Japanese, Syrian and Middle Eastern diasporas, are displayed both in the miniature drawings in the matchboxes, as well as in the collage artworks in his apartment replica.
Together, these elements foreground the universal themes of identity, belonging and cross-cultural encounters that lie at the heart of Dalloul’s work. With installations designed to travel, the first chapter of Land of Dreams connects regions and histories, investigating encounters between East Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe while challenging the perspectives of colonial expansion.
STIR spoke with Bady Dalloul about his artistic journey in December 2024, and the significance of presenting his exhibition at the museum in Tokyo. Excerpts from Dalloul’s conversation with STIR below.
Erik Augustin Palm: Could you elaborate on the concept behind Land of Dreams and its significance as a nomadic exhibition series?
Bady Dalloul: I was born in a family of Syrian heritage whose members have migrated to many places over several generations. Some started from practically zero in countries they didn’t know much about, but I remember vividly how fantastical and often very subjectively their stories were told to me. I would like to see Land of Dreams as a tribute to these stories of migration, amazement, integration, loss and bewilderment. The nomadic aspect of this exhibition stands in the different venues where it will be displayed. Starting from the Mori Museum in Tokyo, it will travel in September 2025 to Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai and later in 2026 to the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM) in Lisbon, thus echoing the fluidity of stories and peoples between places.
Erik: The exhibition traces a journey from East Asia through the Middle East to Western Europe, reversing colonial trajectories. What do you aim to convey through this reversed historical path?
Dalloul: [Ferdinand] Magellan, Vasco de Gama and other “explorer” stories were featured in so many studies, books, articles, video games and films. Growing up in Paris, their lives and discoveries were taught at school, I believed then as much as my schoolmates that they were heroes: seeing places, naming them, moulding the world and opening seaways, shaping peoples and later shaping countries. When I discussed this reversed path with the curator of this exhibition, Martin Germann, we had in mind the current demographics and economy of Japan, the rising influence of new places such as Dubai and the world witnessing one of its biggest migration waves from countries in development and it became interesting to us to compare historical colonial trajectories with contemporary individual stories.
Erik: How do your Syrian heritage and French upbringing converge in your art and how is this duality reflected in the Land of Dreams series?
Dalloul: I see myself as a product of the French educational system. As a result, I tend to establish links between visual shape and concept in art. Being of Syrian heritage makes me question history, politics and [the] nation-state. Embracing my identities conveys, I think, this strange duality as a visual proposition [and] as a product of a complicated political legacy. If you look at a map of contemporary Syria, you see geometrical borders drawn by French and British gentlemen in 1916: Mr [Mark] Sykes and Mr [François Georges] Picot; empowered surveyors are authors of lands of concepts. I would like to repair this and imagine instead a Land of Dreams.
Erik: How have recent global events influenced your artistic themes and the development of the Land of Dreams series?
Dalloul: I left my artist residency in Japan last November and currently live in Dubai where more than 80 per cent of the population is composed of foreigners. Last weekend, for the first time since 2008, I started to dream again about visiting the country of my parents – Syria. I communicate in French and Arabic daily. Sincerely, Land of Dreams is evolving daily in my head and my drawings.
Erik: Why did you choose matchboxes as the medium for your miniature drawings? Do they carry specific symbolic or practical meaning in the context of the work?
Dalloul: I used to collect stamps from an early age; their imagery and what they represent continue to fascinate me. I started drawing my own at one point and continued to draw at this scale since. In 2016 we started to be overwhelmed by the violence of images coming out of Syria. It felt like there was no limit to the horrors we were witnessing, they were everywhere and there was nowhere to escape. So I started drawing, as a way of taking control of them, digesting them and arranging them in a way that leads others to see, digest and understand them too. Over time [depictions of] violence ceased gradually and images of my daily life entered into what I increasingly considered a drawing diary.
Erik: How challenging was it to draw inside such a small format? Could you walk us through the concrete process and techniques you used to achieve this delicate work?
Dalloul: From the beginning, I saw matchboxes as fragile handmade frames holding these pictures. As far as I can remember, I always drew things on a scale not bigger than my body (176 cm tall and more or less 60 kg). For me, it made sense that way. I work on a simple desk and a stable chair, I sleep next to these. On a good day I take a short break nearly every hour to keep my drawing hand stable and my back in good shape. I don’t use a magnifier and I try to stop working when daylight is over. I collect images daily and do collages. This constitutes my base for drawings. The whole exhibition presented at the Mori Museum fits a standard 23kg aeroplane luggage [allowance].
Erik: Your childhood involved inventing imaginary countries with your brother. How has this practice influenced your artistic narrative, particularly in the exhibition?
Dalloul: As a child, my brother Jad and I would spend summers at our grandparents’ house in Damascus and it was here that the geopolitical realities of the region during the 1980s would seep into the edges of our childhood, ever-present even if not yet fully understood. To entertain ourselves, we imagined that we were the kings of our own fictional countries. Jad was the ruler of ‘Jadland’ and I commanded ‘Badland’. The more we wrote and the more we drew, the more these countries became real. This game, unconsciously, had become a way to process the daily life around us, a sense of restoring order in an otherwise disordered world. We weren’t necessarily acutely aware of the political events of the time, but we were certainly aware of their impact on us. Today I see drawing and collage as nearly the same thing, a way to understand the complexities of the world and somehow accept it as it is.
Erik: In Ahmad the Japanese (2021), a film crafted as a collage of scenes depicting the daily life of a fictional archetypal character named Ahmad, chronicling his journey as he emigrates from the Arab world to Japan, you blend personal stories with broader historical contexts. What drives you to intertwine individual narratives with collective histories?
Dalloul: The “Father of History”, Herodotus, is also known as the “Father of Lies”. History is often told by the one who survived. For me it speaks to how much telling a story could be something very sensitive, especially when it is told from a position of power, such as in an educational system, or if its distribution is wide such as in the press. It also tells us the level of responsibility we are given when one is on the receiving end of a story. For my practice, I often collaborate with people who are willing to share their stories. This is where, at my humble level of responsibility and visibility, I knowingly decide to involve fiction. This is to protect my collaborators, but also to be able to create room for reflection, play and imagination where sometimes there is so much room for serious indignation. Thus, Ahmad, the main protagonist of my film, became a complete archetype, a collage of multiple stories through times and spaces, a transcendental being made of fiction and truth.
Erik: When and where exactly did you live in Japan? How did moving from Paris to Japan impact you artistically and personally, before, during and after that experience?
Dalloul: I started making exhibitions in Japan in 2014 and every year since. In 2021 I was granted a residency at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, as well as at Tokas Residency in Tokyo. I enjoyed both so much that I applied for a Japanese residence card right after. In Japan, I found so much to see and understand that I stayed. Japan occupies a sizeable part of my history now. Art professionals and visitors don’t only see what element is Syrian and what could be French in my work, maybe because my personal migration has kind of imposed a new layer of understanding. My work is no longer mostly the product of history and politics and this is in my eyes today what I am perhaps most proud of. I have changed the course of conversations in my life thanks to Japan.
Erik: Your time at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto has had a visible impact on your work. Can you discuss specific experiences from this residency that have shaped your artistic direction?
Dalloul: I began my residency at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, one of the most prestigious French multidisciplinary research and creative residencies in Japan, on January 1, 2021, after embarking on perhaps the last plane to land in Japan before the Covid closure. Nonetheless, being so excited to be there to create my film, Ahmad the Japanese, enabled me, with the amazing help of the villa team, to meet many inspiring people in this strange context. Being their only resident for nearly seven months undeniably enhanced their focus and time to help me complete my project in a record time. I will forever be grateful for their support.
Erik: Given the cultural specificity of Tokyo, what unique reflections or interpretations do you expect this audience to bring to your work?
Dalloul: Although Syria is located in Asia, it is fair to say there is more history in common between the Arab world and Europe. When I migrated to Japan I dreamt honestly of escaping history and it happened so. I was able to start conversations in very different ways than in Europe or the Middle East. On the one hand, I was [frequently] considered just a foreigner, a stranger to most customs in this new place. And on the other hand, in this newly found state of strangeness, I was allowed to be free of any legacy, like a tabula rasa, a blank page allowing me to experiment and juggle with elements I was seeing. I hope my exhibition will softly and quietly open discussions on what is it to be a foreign resident in Japan, to have children educated in Tokyo, to have a foreign parent or parents, to become Japanese, to exoticise and to be exoticised, to dream in a foreign language without subtitles and eventually to adopt this language as your own and leave your mother tongue in the background.
Erik: Your art often carries political undertones. How do you balance political commentary with artistic expression without compromising either aspect?
Dalloul: I try to not point fingers. As you can see the world is broken already. My artistic expression gives me the possibility and time to try to understand, meanwhile, I do my best to not use it to judge. This said subjectivity remains very relative. Let me give an example; since [a] week, Syria has experienced a tremendous change with the fall of one of the oldest dictatorships in the world. My heart still grieves for the victims of this awful period, I know nobody who didn’t suffer from this regime. But creating an artwork with this fact requires [one], in my opinion, to not rush at all.
'Land of Dreams' is on view at the Mori Art Museum until January 19, 2025.
From the STIR World website.
