On Hospitality – Layla Al-Attar and Hotel Al-Rasheed

Film / Performance2024

Film still: a woman with long dark hair sits barefoot on the floor in front of a large projected black-and-white portrait of a man, with a boom microphone overhead and a wooden cabinet of glass objects beside her.

Film still: a woman holds a faceted glass form in front of her face; a Swedish subtitle at the foot of the frame reads “Det finns inga skäl;”.

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On Hospitality – Layla Al-Attar and Hotel Al-Rasheed is a short film in which Areej Almansory performs the lead role of the Iraqi artist Layla Al-Attar. Through performance and storytelling, the work revisits Layla Al-Attar’s artistic legacy and her resistance to power, violence, and erasure.

By embodying Layla Al-Attar, Areej engages with questions of memory, representation, and the role of the artist within political and historical narratives. The performance becomes a way of inhabiting another artist’s voice while reflecting on loss, resilience, and cultural memory.

The film has been screened internationally, including in Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne, and at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. It was awarded at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival and nominated for the Guldbagge Award for Best Short Film.

This project marked an important step in Areej Almansory’s artistic practice, deepening her engagement with performance as a method for storytelling and historical reflection.