About the exhibition 

Ten years ago I organized a show with a group of young artists who used photography as a mode of expression. Over the course of three months, we worked collaboratively to develop their projects around a central theme. The show was entitled: the photograph, the object, the self.

This year I have fortunately come in contact with the work of five young people who use photography in an interesting and deeply personal way, that sets their work apart from the huge flow of images circulating across electronic media. The quality of their work has spurred me to repeat the experience and kick start a three months long dialogue with them around their practice, culminating with an exhibition hosted by Mashrabia Gallery. Participating artists are: Sherifa Hamid (19xx), Tasnim Abdel Rahman (19xx), Nadia Mounir (19xx), Amr Adel (19xx) and Ziad Tarek Hassan (19xx).

For all five, the camera is a "third eye", an inseparable companion that bears witness to their experience of the World as it is today and of the arduous process of dealing with a highly volatile and often hostile environment. Photographing becomes an intuitive means of assuming one's place, defining one's existence as an individual among the masses. Their images can be read as contemplative expressions of their thoughts about higher notions of freedom, equality and what it means to live together; but also as search tools for meaning in what utterly presents itself as defying all logic. They weave together a highly personal order of seeing that dissects the bursting reality in the quest for a breathing space. The image becomes a stage onto which the self is repeatedly played against the whole with an undefinable fluidity with often unexpected results.

Third Eye presents five fresh bodies of work, the largest exhibition of the artists' work to date: from the intricately staged and often humorous inner monologues of Sherifa Hamid (1997) to the lyrical solitary expressions of Tasnim Abdel Rahman of neglected and overlooked spaces (1994); the colorful hierarchies of order/disorder of Nadia Mounir (1988) to the seemingly nonchalant and dark flaneries of Amr Adel (1989) and last but not least the monochromatic utopic urban visions of Ziad Tarek Hassan (1991) .

Hala El Koussy