MAHA MAAMOUN
b. 1972 works in Cairo
untitled, installation view
Wasla took me out of Cairo - the city where I live and the inherent
subject of most of my work - to Nuweiba. Facing the Red Sea and almost
totally surrounded by mountains felt very alien to me—as a landscape,
a work environment, and a subject matter. Add to this the awkwardness
of the time: the first day of the workshop was also the first of the
US-UK invasion of Iraq. The work I would produce in this workshop
was inevitably going to deal with this awkwardness of both place and
time.
The piece I worked on attempted to recreate the atmosphere of walking
into the surrounding landscape. A fragmented image (photo-collage)
of the nearby Fjord Lagoon and the mountains engulfing it was mounted
along the four walls of a room lit by green florescent bulbs, one
on each wall, in reference to the night-vision war imagery shown on
TVs everywhere. The effect of fragmenting the landscape and green
lighting simulated the acts of surveillance, mapping, and appropriation.
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