Haraga -'The Burning' is a work that addresses migration, displacement, and the fragile circulation of images through an intentionally intimate mode of viewing. The title derives from an Arabic slang term meaning ‘those who burn’ and in this context refers to migrants who “burn” borders, documents, or routes in pursuit of passage to Europe, often at extreme personal risk, and at risk of their lives. At the centre of the work is a low-resolution mobile phone video recorded during a dangerous Mediterranean crossing undertaken by a group of young Algerian men travelling toward Spain on a small boat.

Rather than presenting the footage through a conventional cinematic installation, Ourahmane reconstructs the conditions under which she first encountered the video herself. Sent directly to her phone via Bluetooth by one of the migrants she was in touch with, named Houari, the work is distributed to viewers through a local wireless connection within the exhibition space, requiring each visitor to receive and watch the video on their own personal device. This method of transmission fundamentally alters the encounter with the work. The imagery remains small, unstable, and physically close to the body, resisting the distanced spectacle through which migration is often represented within mass media.

The grainy footage, shaped by darkness, movement, and technological limitation, carries an intense sense of uncertainty and vulnerability. At the same time, the work foregrounds invisible systems of circulation, of people, data, borders, and communication, that structure contemporary movement across territories. By collapsing private reception and political reality, Haraga -'The Burning' transforms the viewer into a participant within the fragile networks through which these journeys are documented, witnessed, and remembered. Holding this footage in your hand, complicated questions around complicity emerge; what is the status of this footage in my own hand, on my own device, inside a gallery? In what way is this platform offered by an artworld useful? What do I / we do now we have held this knowledge and felt this plight in the manner that we have? How does the artist feel about bearing the responsibility of this footage and imparting it to us?