Impressions of Cairo (2010), 15 imprints on paper, 51 x 36 cm. Private courtesy
Impressions of Cairo is a paper work made of fifteen prints of walls in Cairo. In Winter 2010 I visited Cairo, a city which has more citizens than Tunisia, the country where I was born. This metropolis is characterized by strong contradictions: tradition and modernism, culture and illiteracy, poverty and wealth, bureaucracy and spirituality. All voices fade through the noisy hustle of this melting pot, but if you risk a closer look on the walls you will find the whisper of the people carved into stone.
I started to search for writings engraved in the walls of the Egyptian capital. As tools I used a hammer and papers. I found a profusion of religious words and one sentence expressing sexual frustration namely about homosexuality. Maybe the specific characters of urban habitats can be read on its walls. Their surfaces open new spaces where the inhabitants can express themselves through hardly visible mute discourses and the walls become non-human actors within the society.
I started to search for writings engraved in the walls of the Egyptian capital. As tools I used a hammer and papers. I found a profusion of religious words and one sentence expressing sexual frustration namely about homosexuality. Maybe the specific characters of urban habitats can be read on its walls. Their surfaces open new spaces where the inhabitants can express themselves through hardly visible mute discourses and the walls become non-human actors within the society.
Berlin, 03 / 05 / 10
Translation of the engraved words in the panels above.