CAMARADERIE. 2009

DVD – 10.30 min - color, sound, loop. ‘found videos and texts on YouTube’.                 

This work is based on videos I found on YouTube, showing Egyptian professional bodybuilders in different situations while exercising or rehearsing before posing in local and international competitions, also other videos showing amateur young men from Cairo, interested in this type of sports which quickly affects and changes the shape of their body. The quality and production style of these videos is ranging between the institutional, the personal, professional, and the home-made video quality, but all of them are celebrating and representing the masculine body in different ways. The research and work process on this material reminded me of some other audio and textual material related to certain personal memories of objects and situations like the end of the continuous image broadcast in official Egyptian Television accompanied by the national anthem, the same tune which is always being played when the bodybuilders officially represent their country on stage. By using techniques of adding and cropping, the work is trying to understand the representative power of the self and the masculine body, in its many variations from the official, to the popular, ethical, personal, and erotic.

Installation shots, Institute Du Monde Arab, Paris, France, 2012.

 "Connecting the intense and charged world of popular bodybuilding in Egypt with the artist's attempt at understanding the modes of self-representation in such a context makes this investigation of male bonding and the camera especially evocative. Mahmoud Khaled manages once again to be both visceral and cerebral at the same time." Hassan Khan 

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