Finissage of REFERENCES* - Artists Activating the Archive
(This event has passed)

Theme:
Format:
Date:
Jan 12, 2014 7:00pm
Organized by: Contemporary Image Collective (CIC)
Venue: Contemporary Image Collective (CIC)
Address: 2nd Floor, 27 Talaat Harb St., Downtown, Cairo
Admission: Free
Supported by:
Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council in Cairo
Event Language: English & Arabic
Website: www.ciccairo.com/references.html
www.facebook.com/events/551469714930095/


REFERENCES*
Artists Activating the Archive

 

Curated by Hala Elkoussy and Uriel Orlow
Supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council

 

Finissage:
Sunday 12th January 2014
7pm - Artist Tour of the Exhibition 

 

Following a week-long workshop at CIC in 2012, led by Hala Elkoussy and Uriel Orlow and exploring the generative potential of research and the archival for contemporary art practice, four projects by participating artists were selected to be developed over a year long research and development period. References* presents the culmination of this intensive process in the form of four installations, each addressing a place and its attendant narratives that connect different layers of history with the contemporary. 

Nada Shalaby’s You and I and Time is Long assembles a collection of images and text inspired by the archaeological site of Tel el Yehudiya in Qalyubia Governorate, Egypt. The rhizomatic archive presents multiple accounts of the ancient site weaving together political, social, historical and imaginary narratives. The title, You and I and Time is Long points to an inherent ambivalence embodied in this site; it stems from a colloquial Egyptian phrase used to refer to a lingering animosity (as in “I will get you eventually”), while also implying an eternal state of togetherness. 

In Aliaa Salah’s Lines in the Sea the local newspaper becomes the site where the personal and political implications of territorial and economic claims in the eastern Mediterranean are played out. In a series of collaged newspaper covers we travel into Egypt’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as prescribed by the UN and threatened by a maritime delimitation agreement between Cyprus and Israel. The project questions the basis on which such agreements are concluded and re-imagines newspaper articles about it in the past, present and future. 

Drawing On A Nude Body, a collaborative project by Mariam Elias and Marwa El Shazly, revisits the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University, where they both studied or worked, and examines the drawing studio as a place where the changing politics of art education, aesthetic renewal and cultural hegemony are recorded in the act of drawing. Since its inauguration by Prince Youssef Kamal in 1908, the Faculty of Fine Arts became one of the few places in the country that features the practice of “life models”. Specific families have inherited this job over the years, until nude modeling was banned in the 1970’s. In the video the silently posing life-models are given a voice to talk about art, the academic institution and their work, while a publication documents repetitive student assignments over the years. 

Amado Alfadni’s Black Holocaust Museum imagines a museum for the largely forgotten Herero and Namaqua Genocide in modern day Namibia. Considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century it served as a model for Hitler's attempted extermination of the European Jews. The project grapples with the lack of representation and the memorial form. The artist states: “When a Herero dies a sacred fire is lit by a person who shares his or her last name. Because the names of so many Herero were lost in the concentration camps and replaced with numbers, their fires can never be burned and their spirits cannot be released. The three thousand pieces of unburned wood stand in for the Herero victims. Each one is stamped and numbered to memorialize a victim of the Shark Island concentration camp.” 

The four projects of REFERENCES* and the research leading up to them were initiated and supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council in Cairo.