A crack in the Memory of My Memory is an ongoing project and a story that keeps growing and evolving as I travel more along and beyond the roads… (2019-)

The initial Scenography that was proposed for 12th Edition Les Encontres de Bamako, Biennale Africaine de La Photographie in Mali and Tales of Contemporary Egypt exhbition at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, 2019.

The project was exhibited as well at the Second Edition of Cairographie Exhibition at Darb 1718 in November 2019. I was awarded a grant to work for two months on the project and showcase the final work at Cairographie Photography festival. This project is still in progress as my story keeps unfolding with more treasures and stories from my family’s house in El Mehalla.

The Scenography was created to show a line of stream of consciousness. A state that occurred to me as I embarked on the road between Mehalla and Cairo. Images placed next to each other tell my story and raise questions that keeps erupting as I move on the road. A timeline that keeps interchanging as I try to recall my own journey of belonging on the road.

Along the four walls, I was working to encapsulate the viewer and place him/her in a state of confusion between the past and present, transcending my feeling to the audience through juxtaposing imageries of Cairo and Mehalla. Between here and there I exist, I am both yet I’m trying to understand my current present which seems to be different than the one I grew up on.

A display case with my objects of memory. Archives and material memory left behind from my paternal grandparents. Treasures I only discovered after they had gone.

As far as my research brought me, I was never able to find old postcards from El Mehalla Al Kobra although it was known to be the beacon of industry during the early and mid twentieth century. So I decided to create my own version of postcards with some famous landmarks such as ‘The Misr Spinning and Weaving company clock tower’, showing the current state and reality of the city. In a way glorying and framing the remnants of what once was.