Day 346 - Maha Maamoun



June 5, 2023

Gallery 914 is devoted to what I assume is another temporary exhibition, this one featuring Maha Maamoun, an Egyptian photographer and videographer who was born in 1972. Six of her works - four photographs and two videos - are on display. 

The photographs are all scenes of Cairo: a brightly lit night view of buildings and roads seen from on high, a felucca set against the shore,  adults and children cavorting in the Nile (only one woman, fully clothed and wearing a headscarf, appears among the bathers), and a park where several couples are seated on benches.  The caption notes that the photographs derive from postcards, but that Maamoun's "subtle manipulation of the digital images lends them a sinister note," conveying "a sense of discomfort, guardedness, insecurity, and lack of personal space that she feels is palpable in public places...." Sorry, but I just don't see it. Yes, Cairo is huge and teeming, and privacy is probably at a premium and virtually impossible for people of  limited means.  Nonetheless, the photographs, to me at least, suggest that Cairenes have learned how to have fun, and how to find places for private conversations, even if these places are public and crowded.  

On the other hand, one of the videos, entitled "2026, 2010" strikes me as intensely pessimistic, if not despairing. Made in 2010 and eight minutes long, the entire video shows a blindfolded man, who is seen from various perspectives and often in closeup,  lying in a hammock in a drab space with concrete walls (a prison?).  The voiceover, the legend explains, is the voice of the protagonist of a novel,"The Revolution of 2053: The Beginning (2007)."  The man is mentally time-traveling into the future.  He imagines ,and the voiceover describes, a luxurious banquet hall with marble floors and glass walls that afford a view of the pyramids where revelers, who appear to be Asian and European rather than Egyptians, feast on caviar, lobster, and sushi,  protected by a wall that blocks their views of the crumbling old city. Outside, very thin, almost naked children chase a car approaching the wall, They scream hysterically and fight over bags of food that are thrown out to them. It's a powerful critique of contemporary Egypt and a bleak view of the country's future.  The Arab Spring, of course, occurred just one year after Maamoun made her video. But it's hard to believe that the deposition of Mubarak and the subsequent political upheavals will  fundamentally change Egyptian society and level the vast disparities of wealth to which the video alludes.


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