Museum as Hub

-William Wells, Director, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art

The concept of a “neighborhood” in Cairo stretches far beyond a simple graphical designation on a city map. Cairo’s neighborhoods are urban structures that have incorporated in their identities the specific characteristics of their inhabitants. The city’s districts are not static, but living and ever-changing spaces, which define the city’s unique countenance.

Nestled in the heart of Downtown Cairo, the Townhouse Gallery shares its most immediate surroundings with the neglected 19th century Said Halim’s Palace, numerous car mechanics’ garages, coffee shops, green-grocers and carpenters. A strange, but charming atmosphere of extreme contrast is what defines this patch of urban space. On the one hand, the decadent architectural charm of Cairo’s bourgeoisie buildings, erected little before and during the first decades of the 20th century, serve as a reminder of the former colonial powers. On the other hand, the neighborhood’s current inhabitants from the lower and middle working class are bearers of modern Egyptian culture and customs. Throughout the years, this neighborhood has experienced a symbiotic coexistence between artists, writers, intellectuals, and conservative male workers from the lanes.

Artists Ayman Ramadan, Susan Hefuna, Tarek Zaki and Jan Rothuizen all address in their work this melting pot of different social groups. In their works, the artists use physical objects and the actual surrounding of the neighborhood. They integrate individuals, research different aspects of the social net, and reload the trivial situations of every day life with deeper meanings. Rather than looking at the neighborhood as a geographical location in the city, they look at it as a symbol, a microcosm of Egyptian society with its inherent contradictions. They act consciously as mediators between the obvious on the surface and the subliminal perception of more profound social meanings.

Ayman Ramadan’s Koshary min Zamman is an installation that presents photographs documenting inter-governmental peace processes over the last decade within the confines of a built-in koshary shop (koshary is a low cost carbohydrate meal constituting the staple diet of the Egyptian working class). Ramadan’s work is layered with meanings, literal and metaphoric. On the one hand, it is a direct reference to the popular practice of local businesses, such as coffee places, restaurants, shops, barber shops, of putting up pictures of their founder in their premises. These pictures are regularly “photoshopped” to show the founder of the business with a local celebrity (a politician, a famous actor, a singer). Taking this reference a step further, Ramadan’s work becomes a commentary on social identity as it plays out in the public arena. The term min zamman (from the past) refers to origin, and therefore ascertains the credibility of a local business. On the other hand, the photographs of recognizable international political figures eating koshary in peace negotiations highlight the ineffectiveness of these meetings which, like a koshary meal, satiate the appetite very quickly and provide an unfounded feeling of self-satisfaction and contentment. His photographs reveal the link between international political negotiations and the ingredients of koshary, their unhealthiness, availability, cheapness, and the feeling of immediate satisfaction and apathy of the consumer after its ingestion.

Susan Hefuna’s Vitrines of Afaf is an installation displaying every day intimate objects belonging to the sisters, mothers or wives of the lane workers, exhibited in the format of the traditional mobile “vitrines” that can be seen all over Cairo. The title “Vitrines of Afaf” refers to the name “Afaf”, which is a synonym for any woman who is unnamed, or whose name shouldn’t be known in public. The “vitrines” collect and reveal the dreams and fantasies of all these “unnamed”, “unknown” women.

Tarek Zaki’s artistic discourse has long focused on recreating mundane recognizable objects. With his subtle artistry and developed sense of the “sublime,” Zaki alters the existential state or “presence” of the objects he mimics. By questioning the position of the viewer as such, Zaki’s work concerns itself with our associations with museums and artifacts. How we gaze at a certain object in a museum preserved in a vitrine. How we try to understand our past and foresee the future. The objects he creates belong neither to the past nor to any specific age. Instead, they speak to the present, future and past simultaneously. By taking everyday objects and sculpting them into precious archeological artifacts, Zaki converts them into found objects that may one day populate museum collections. In doing so, he offers a subtle critique on what we memorialize, and what we offer to posterity. Zaki uses a molding technique in creating casts of commonplace post-modern paraphernalia such as electric circuits, computer keyboards, digital accessories and computerized rocket-like bombs. The artist then beautifies and personalizes the casts, adding subtle trompe l’oeil effects that mimic the weathered and decomposed nature of fossils and archaeological specimens. Finally, Zaki creates a museum environment for his objects placing them in conventional vitrines and imitating traditional museum lighting. Displayed in glass cabinets, the fossilized, tablets, rockets and gadgets are cut off from the world of “current events,” while still managing to symbolically relate to it. Tarek Zaki will be in residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York from January to June 2008, where he will produce work for the Museum as Hub project in the New Museum.

Jan Rothuizen’s Last Tourist in Cairo originated as an online passage along hand-drawn maps, posters, texts and photographs of Cairo, where the artist did a three month residency in 2007. Inspired by the figure of the “flaneur” introduced by Walter Benjamin in the 1920’s, “The Last Tourist” website is designed to mimic the peculiar way we experience, interpret and read cities as we wander through them as a tourist, inevitably translating the codes and the symbols of our new surrounding into our own cultural language. Rothuizen will come back to Cairo for a three month residency in 2008 to continue working on this project, with the intention of converting the experiences conveyed in his website into works that function as independent pieces.