Exhibition-Making and Cairo’s Shifting Urbanscape

It is noteworthy but unsurprising that three group exhibitions about Cairo’s urban landscapes took place within a year; “The City is Stuck to My Skin” (November-December 2023), “Eyes Closed, Everything You See is Yours” (May 2024), and “Through the Smog” (September-October 2024). What may be perceived as a trend in exhibition-making reflects the sense of urgency towards and sustained attention to a particular subject in people’s lives and artists’ practices. 

At the heart of everything we know and experience is the scaffolding of a city–housing, infrastructure, heritage, and nature. Its vulnerability implicates all its inhabitants, from the large neighbourhoods to the smallest of plants. It is hard to grasp Cairo’s vast and speedy transformation in the last few years. From the demolition of houseboats along the Nile, the displacement of Geziret Waraa’s inhabitants, the loss of the city of the Dead and other cemeteries, the neglect of heritage sites, the widening of streets and shrinking of public parks and space–all in the name of development and modernization. The desired final outcome of these changes is unclear. Still, it is undeniable that they have had and continue to have tremendous repercussions on the city’s inhabitants. 

Including works by emerging and established artists as well as works made specifically for the exhibitions or made in the late 2010s, the three exhibitions examine urban landscapes from different points of view. “The City is Stuck to My Skin” explores the relationship between bodies and the city, using the metaphor of skin to uncover layers of history and memory. “Eyes Closed, Everything You See Is Yours” centres bricks as the protagonist of Cairo’s urbanity. Lastly, “Through the Smog” deals with visibility; the city’s uncertain future and past are hazy. A closer study of the recurring urban-based exhibitions raises questions about current art production. What is the context of the works that were presented in the exhibitions? What materials are artists utilising, and what mediums are they expanding on? How do the exhibitions connect with other forms of knowledge dissemination pertaining to urban landscapes in Cairo? 

“The City is Stuck to My Skin”, curated by Farida Youssef, took place from November 23 to December 24, 2023, as part of the third edition of the Something Else biennale curated by Simon Djami and Moataz Nasr. The biennale reflected on the question “What Then?” and was held in various parts of the Citadel of Cairo. 

The exhibition features the work of seven photographers–Ali Zaraay, Amina Kadous, Fares Zaitoun, Mahmoud Talaat, Ehab Behairy, Maria Saba, and Karim El Hayawan–whose works expand our understanding of photography. Youssef uses the Citadel, built in the 12th century and originally used to identify threats from afar and protect the city and its inhabitants, to explore current relationships with Cairo. 

Youssef was interested in the bodily experience of the city, exploring how it imprints itself on its citizens and the surfaces they inhabit. “The City is Stuck to My Skin” was hosted in The Red Castle in the Citadel, a room in need of restoration and where no nails can penetrate the walls. The artworks not only had to speak about the city but directly engage with its surfaces.

Artists reflected on pre-existing materials in the city, as well as mediums, to make work. Ali Zaaray’s installation I Don’t Wish for this Image to Have an End (2023) draws from the layers of photographs on buildings in Cairo, especially regarding advertisements and political posters in the early 2010s. One of Zaaray’s portraits perfectly aligns with a crack in the wall. Amina Kadous’s A Brick with Ten Holes is a series of photo transfers of red bricks stacked on top of each other–a prominent building material in Cairo that is often left bare. Karim El Hayawan’s Between Here and Elsewhere engages with the carpets that are donated to mosques by the neighbourhood residents or mutawallis. 

Many works were not created for the exhibition but reflected the artists’ ongoing relationships with the city. Maria Saba’s Urban Jungle, originally shown at her solo show at Tintera Gallery in 2022, is a series of photographic prints on aluminium of the artist lying on the pavement, confronting the city’s materiality and attempting to find a space for her body. Mahmoud Talaat’s Absence is a video from photographs taken during his nightly walks in his neighbourhood. 

To this day, the Citadel remains a high viewpoint of Cairo. On this lookout spot, visitors can stand and see the skyline of buildings constructed and demolished, new, empty, and shiny. Cairo’s noise, dust, and changes do not escape you. “The pace of the transformation is violent; it supersedes our memories,” says Youssef. The change affects us on many scales. It can even reach your skin.”

The second group exhibition took place six months later at Access Art Space in the heart of Downtown Cairo. “Eyes Closed, Everything You See Is Yours” was curated by the designer duo Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut. Focusing on red bricks and the labour behind them, they ask, “Who has the privilege to dream? What hands mould [sic] the arenas for lives to unfold?” 

The exhibition features works made between 2008 and 2024 by photojournalists, designers, urban researchers, and visual artists. Rooms house works showcasing the production of bricks and brick masons and postcards from the New Administrative Capital, and two rooms feature interactive works that invite the viewer to participate in a survey and imagine “a life worth living” (based on the slogan in an advertisement for a luxurious gated compound). 

The exhibition’s name draws on something Birgit Severin’s grandfather told her, implying that “nothing surrounding her belonged to her, meaning she wasn’t in a position of power,” says Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo. Within the exhibition context, we play with the mutual meaning of the sentence, questioning to whom the ones in power give the right to dream. 

Beyond the curatorial, the duo’s input in the exhibition is prominent. BackRest / Back Weight is a chair made from the back carriers that workers use to transport cumbersome bricks weighing up to 75 kg, according to the wall label. A piece of work featuring three bills framed totaling 50 L.E—the average day salary for a worker—hangs in the corner, raising some questions. Brick Production is a khayamiya depicting the brick-making process found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian government official Rekhmire. Their works are an attempt to provide insight into the conditions and infrastructure of the fabric and materiality of Cairo.

“Eyes Closed, Everything You See Is Yours” brings together works that were published and showcased in different contexts. Nora Zeid’s illustrations of the empty billboards and uninhabited compounds were part of a commission by the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2020 for Corniche 2. The research in Housing Cairo is showcased through architectural drawings highlighting the richness of Ard El-Lewa’s typologies and a film about the urban processes that took place between the 1960s and 2010s and the way people view informal housing. It also presents documentation of Lara Baladi’s Borg Al Amal, an installation and tribute to the ashwa’iyat, that took place at the Opera House during the 11th Cairo Biennale in 2009 and is still relevant. It was constructed by local artisans–with bricks stamped with the word ‘Hope.’ 

“Through the Smog” took place at the American University of Cairo in Tahrir in September and October 2024, a month and a half ago. It featured old and new works by Ali Zaraay, Amina Kadous, Fares Zaitoon, Fatma Abodoma, Karim Fouad, Mahmoud Bakkar, Mostafa Youssef, Muhammad Mustafa, Omar Abd Albaky, and Tamer El Said–a mix of artists, architects, photographers, and filmmakers. 

Curated by photographer and anthropologist Ebrahim Bahaa-Eddin, the exhibition looks at how Cairo’s urbanscape is rapidly changing in the name of visions of modernization. He mentions that “the title is synonymous with the nature of the proclaimed vision of development. There’s no time for the dust to settle, and now, to navigate our city, we are forced to look at and move through a very thick layer of smog, metaphorically and literally.”

The theme of erasure is notably present in the exhibition. Karim Fouad’s looped videos, titled Urban Fragments, show 3D scans of three sites and their status: houseboat (status: uprooted or demolished), residential building in Sayeda Zeinab (demolished), and Ali Pasha Fahmy Mausoleum in Al Sayeda Aisha (threat of demolition). He uses a technique called photogrammetry–making 3D models out of photographs–which he wrote about and encouraged citizens to employ in the inaugural issue of the architectural magazine DataLand. In a far room in the space, over fifteen drawings by Mostafa Youssef are on display: ink-on-paper miniatures he started in 2018 that depicted different structures in Cairo, such as a circus tent, banners, and buildings. They are drawn in pointillism, also in a state of liminality of both emergence and disappearance–as though seen through smog. 

Fatma Abodoma’s installation consists of sixty cyanotype prints, mostly done with leaves she has been collecting whenever she passes by a tree being cut–likely to make room for concrete and an extra car lane. She speaks of this work as “a eulogy to the eroding landscapes of Cairo, to remember the fallen ones.” Abodoma’s work is timely as more and more public parks in Cairo face a future of both uncertainty and certainty–certain demolition, uncertain future. 

Mahmoud Bakkar’s The City Nursery comprises cement, gypsum, bricks, and dead trees. The branches stand in the middle of a moulded pot made of these rigid materials. Unsure whether the trees will continue to grow or suffocate, the work echoes Something Else biennale’s question, “What Then?” 

Three group exhibitions on Cairo’s urban landscape within a year are not only a response to the present moment but also a call to preserve and reflect on what is being lost in the face of urban expansion. There’s an urgency to discern and question the scaffoldings, and the exhibitions allow certain segments of the public to stop amidst the smog and witness what is at stake. 

A lot of the works across the three exhibitions are an ongoing commitment to document the city and its changes: Mahmoud Khaled and Mahmoud Talaat working with their own photographic archives and Fatma Abodoma’s collection of leaves. There is also a willingness to shift mediums when making work about the city, for a stronger resonance. Ibrahim Ahmed’s practice, which often involves a layering of photographs and prints, becomes a layering of textiles. Amina Kadous’ stacked A Brick with Ten Holes becomes One Brick at a Time, an explosion of bricks with photo transfers, in Through The Smog. 

Artists respond to Cairo’s contradictory changes by investigating the city’s materiality. Whether through intimate bodily engagement with the city’s surfaces, the labour behind the materials that build it, or the erasure of landmarks in the name of progress, each show confronts the uncertainty and dislocation that accompany modernization. 

In her curatorial statement for “The City is Stuck to My Skin”, Farida Youssef writes, “There is a dynamic relationship between our bodies and the city. They produce and mirror one another. Often, the state of one reflects that of the other. As if the cracks on our skin were meant for its walls.” What kind of work would be produced if the cracks on our skin were not hollow and if the walls in our city retained their dignity?

Editor's note: Since this article was written, two other exhibitions about Cairo's urban landscape have been held: the historical survey Urban Spaces of Cairo: Past, Present and Future opened on November 1st at the Grand Egyptian Museum and the group exhibition Cairo: Fabric of the Everyday opened on November 17th.