Muhassad Al-Ani is based in Vienna, where he is currently studying Applied Photography & Time Based Media at the University of Applied Arts. His practice focuses on photographic staging, observation  and investigation of archive material. His work draws from personal experiences of exile and displacement as it investigates the struggle for cultural identity and belonging. He tries to find structure and patterns in the results of postcolonial circumstances and transgenerational trauma around him and his family. 

Out Of Place examines the cognitive dialogue between cultural identity and memory. Based on experiences of geopolitical circumstances such as war and exile, these are processed using photographic staging and recontextualizing archive images.

The identity-forming symbols, which appear repetitively as subjects, are in direct dialogue with the protagonists and my memory. The focus is on eagles, hand gestures, plants and materials. The eagle, which is stored in my memory as a symbol of cultural identity, plays a major role in the visual processing of my investigation. Through my narrative as a child I am in constant dialogue with the eagle, negotiating my identity.

Through the photographic process, realities are made visible that were previously invisible, this process reflects a search for belonging and home.

“All families invent their parents and children, give each of them a story, character, fate, and even a language. There was always something wrong with how I was invented and meant to fit in with the world of my parents and four sisters. Whether this was because I constantly misread my part or because of some deep flaw in my being I could not tell for most of my early life. Sometimes I was intransigent, and proud of it. At other times I seemed to myself to be nearly devoid of any character at all, timid, uncertain, without will. Yet the overriding sensation I had was of always being out of place.“ (Edward Said, 1999).