In Search of an Honest Map presents a poetic perspective on the cycles and circles of life, and
to one’s relationship to place—a gesture of reclamation and introspection in a world that
often leaves one feeling disconnected and depleted. Brahim turns to her native Saudi Arabian
desert as a site of escape and as a collaborator of presence. She traverses the expansive
canvas in searing forty-five-degree heat with intention, trailing her feet to create an indexical
mark in the sand. She lies within the circle she has drawn, fashioning her own fragile refuge—
at once an act of resistance, and reclamation. Her choreographic vocabulary is informed by
phenomenological thought and ritual practice, and the work suggests the possibility of
internal transformation through presence and repetition. The performance does not impose
itself on the landscape—yet emerges from an act of listening; listening not only to the
environment, but to the body and to inhabited memory. Rather than positioning the body as
separate from space, Brahim’s work dwells within it, creating meaning and dialogue through
movement. In this way, her performance becomes a cartography of the present—mapping
not history, but presence itself.

Brahim receives the space rather than occupying it —her body becoming a quiet contour
etched into the sand. The simplicity of the gesture belies its depth: a shape formed through
years of repetition, tracing back to the dance studio where she trained from the age of three.
What appears as ritual is not merely cultural—it is also the residue of practice, of embodied
study, of muscle memory honed through time. Practicing in the landscape becomes a return
to a thought, a way of remembering through movement. Influenced by Guy Debord’s
psychogeography, Brahim’s work engages in a kind of choreographic mapmaking—marking
time and terrain not through domination but through presence. The gestures she offers, the
traces she leaves—curves in the sand, the shadow of a limb—are not performances in the
conventional sense, but meditations on how we relate to land and place, introspectively and
collectively. Drawing on the practices of Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening, and inspired by the
choreographic genius of Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker. In Search of An Honest Mapasks how
we might find intimacy in a world that often denies shelter. It considers the act of lying down
as both refusal and offering—at once existential and connective