Collective exhibit at CIC tackles the art of the archive

The projects were selected to be developed following a workshop that took place at Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) in 2012, led by El Koussy and Orlow, in which the potential of research and archiving for contemporary art was explored. The four installations by contemporary artists Amado Alfadni, Mariam Elias and Marwa El Shazly, Aliaa Salah, and Nada Shalaby each address "a place and its attendant narratives that connect different layers of history with the contemporary," the exhibit's press release explained. In Nada Shalaby's You and I and Time is Long, the archaeological site of Tel el Yehudiya in the governorate of Qalyubia is presented through multiple accounts in images and text, revealing interlinked political, social, historical and imaginary narratives. In Mariam Elias and Marwa El Shazly's project, Drawing On A Nude Body, the artists return to the Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University to explore the studio as a sight where the politics of art education are played out and altered, while the changing dynamics of aesthetics and cultural hegemony are "recorded in the act of drawing." The other projects in the exhibition are Aliaa Salah’s Lines in the Sea and Amado Alfadni’s Black Holocaust Museum. All four projects were supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council in Cairo. Source: Ahram Onine