Bouchra Khalili's ‘The Mapping Journey Project’ among the ‘best works of the 21st century’

17. November 2025

Bouchra Khalili's video work The Mapping Journey Project has been declared one of the most significant works of contemporary art: in its latest issue, the renowned Frieze magazine published a list of the 25 best works of the 21st century.

The ranking is the distillation of a survey of 200 artists, curators and museum directors on the most significant works that have shaped contemporary art since 2000.

Bouchra Khalili has been a university professor of Artistic Strategies at the University of Applied Arts since 2020. In her video work The Mapping Journey Project, eight people who were displaced from their homes for economic, political or social reasons recount their migration journeys around the Mediterranean, both verbally and by drawing on a map with felt-tip pens.

The fundamental premise of the work is the question: ‘How can we form communities that are free from the restrictive notions of belonging shaped by the model of the nation state?’