Photos © Rana El Nemr and Mahmoud Khaled
As if you weren't in your own home. 2008
176 images and 18 typed-out statements, (15 X 10 cm each)
"Khaled’s installation of 15X10 photographic prints of public spaces in Cairo, As if you weren’t in your own home, smuggles issues of same-sex practices into the piece without making them the only perceived content. He annotates the public spaces by circling figures on the photographs, drawing our attention to subtle actions occurring at the edges of view. Men loiter downtown; one may well be suspicious of their purpose. They stand or sit close to one another, they exchange glances, their conversations are unavailable. As Khaled reflects on the dance of same-sex male cruising, texts positioned above and below the pictures state suggestively: ‘There you will not perform your real self’ or ‘There you will meet a woman or man’ or ‘There you will celebrate your beauty, sexuality, and dancing skills’. Again, public space gives these subjects both the opportunity to meet, but restricts their movements and self-presentation because of surveillance, a position that the viewer also occupies. Because these activities are not obvious, the primary meaning of the work could simply be a meditation on how individuals are surveilled in an urban setting. But the artist’s annotations provide a subtext that is even more intriguing." Joseph Pearson
Installation views, Contemporary Image Collective/CIC, Cairo, 2008.
Some images:
Statements:
Installation shots:
BALTIC - Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK. 2010
