Amado Alfadni, Mariam Elias & Marwa El Shazly, Aliaa Salah, Nada Shalaby

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

The exhibition is open Sundays to Thursdays from 12 - 9 pm
Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo

Opening:
Thursday 12 December 2013
6 pm – Curators Introductory Talk: ‘Art and Research’
7:30pm – Opening Reception

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.

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 Mediterranian 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 an agreement between Cyprus and Israel.

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.

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 model for Hitler's attempted extermination of the European Jews. The project grapples with the lack of representation and the memorial form.

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