*Hassan Khan exhibition*

Curated by Beth Stryker, CLUSTER

D-CAF Festival:  March 30 - April 26, 12pm – 8pm

Location: Kodak Passageway

Opening Reception: March 30, 6-8pm

This exhibition will present the first major survey of artist Hassan Khan’s work to be held in Egypt. While internationally celebrated, including a recent nomination for the Hugo Boss prize, and an early influence in Cairo's independent art and music scene, the artist has never before presented such a large number of works in Egypt. Khan premiered his artwork in Cairo in 1995, and this show will feature a selection of his works from the mid 90s to the present day.

The selections in this exhibition span Khan's diverse artistic practice. Text based works (some presented here in Arabic for the first time) charged with myth, dreams, calculation and chance are juxtaposed with enigmatic yet storied sculptural forms. Popular shaabi musical compositions are broken down, analyzed, and re-synthesized in automated improvisations, playing on strains of the archival, and the collective conscious. Portraiture makes an about face, reframing notions of identity, performance, and power.

The exhibition is sited in what had been unutilized storefronts alongside the Kodak passageway in Downtown Cairo, designed and curated by CLUSTER to present a procession of exhibition spaces, interjecting the artist’s ouevre amidst the public and pedestrian activities of the arcade.

Hassan Khan (1975) is an artist, musician, and writer. Recent exhibitions include: The Unrest of Forms, Secession, Vienna, 2013; Hassan Khan, SALT, Istanbul, 2012; Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012; Intense Proximity, Paris Triennial, 2012; and The Ungovernables, New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York, 2012. His first solo show was i am a hero / you are a hero in 1999 at the Gezira Art Center, Cairo. Most recently for the Nuit Blanche Festival Khan premiered Composition for a Public Park a large scale multichannel music and lights installation at the Parc du Belleville in Paris. Khan also regularly performs his own music live; recent appearances include: Klangzeit Festival, Munster; Maerz Musik Festival, Berlin 2013; Ghetto, Istanbul, 2013; Auditorium du Louvre, Paris 2012; Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Venice, 2012; and as the opening act for the 1st D-CAF Festival, Cairo, 2012. His publications include The Agreement (2011) and Nine Lessons Learned from Sherif El Azma (2009). Khan lives and works in Cairo, Egypt.