(Photo: Part of promotional material for Colony)
Gypsum Gallery in Cairo will host the first part of Shady El-Noshokaty's latest project in October, a solo exhibition titled Colony – Latitude.
The exhibition is the first part of a fifteen-stage project called Colony; El-Noshokaty has been working on this concept since 2012, starting with the biological meaning of the term colony, which refers to multiplying cells.
The artist examined a birthmark on his own skin, and conducted extensive research to find 15 existing cities and locations that match the contours of the birthmark.
According to the artist's statement, “the show is built on a basic principle of grand colonial projects in their desire to divide and conquer the world, often based on power classifications related to ethnicity and skin colour.”
A multimedia project, the exhibit offers over 60 selected drawings, diagrams, an animated video, and sculptural forms.
“The drawings - which operate as diagram, notes, studies and observations - chart an impossible territory,” the statement reads.
El-Noshokaty is an established visual artist, scholar and professor of arts and the founder of ASCII foundation for contemporary art education.
He holds a BA and PhD from the Helwan Faculty of Art Education in Cairo, and received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (SAIC).
His work has been displayed internationally at prestigious venues including the Venice Biennale, the Hayward Gallery, the Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the Mori Art Museum of Tokyo, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, FACT in Liverpool and l'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
Programme:
The exhibition runs from 5 October to 25 November
Gypsum Gallery, Apartment 2 on the ground floor, 5 Ibrahim Naguib Street, Garden City, Cairo
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