Contemporary Egyptian artist Hala Elkoussy (b.1974) has transported downtown Cairo onto the walls of the Mashrabia Gallery, orchestrating a visual voyage for visitors to explore the neighbourhood anew in her exhibition Journey Around my Living Room.

Armed with her camera, Elkoussy trodded the streets of downtown in the spring and summer of 2012 driven by a desire to capture the visual richness of mundane, daily routines. The result is an installation that archives a host of overlooked, yet familiar bits and pieces of Cairo’s downtown fabric.

A vitrine of random objects welcomes visitors into this wormhole (otherwise known as Mashrabia Gallery), into this tour of downtown Cairo. Carefully sorted yet blatantly unconnected objects, such as a plate of chocolates, silk fabric patches, a miniature plastic palm tree and multi-coloured shoe laces intrigue the audience and set up the journey of dishevelled nostalgia they are about to embark on.

Photographs are spread out unevenly across the walls, ranging from stylised snapshots of a tailor, elaborate storefronts and a flower shop, to casually-cropped, purely documental photos of street signs, advertisements, street art, among much else. 

Walls are also paid the occasional visit from variously shaped mirrors; these add multidimensionality and depth to the space and also personalise the experience, placing you in the exhibition in a way.

On one wall, a series of postcard-sized photographs are fastened to the wall with thread-thin metal pins. A few details from the images are given real life form, brought out of the photos, including two wooden tables linked together with metal chains.

On another wall, painted grey and green, the artist juxtaposes a few photographs with her own compositions of coloured paper, recreating the red, yellow and blue patterns of a woman’s dress, for example.

Before heading to this oversized photo album sprawling across the gallery walls, the viewer is forced to stop and stare into a large wooden cabinet. This cupboard of mementoes is perhaps the highlight of the exhibition.

Stuffed with familiar objects including candles, calendars, books, CDs, paintings and more; this wooden structure is in a way, a storytelling device, its chambers triggering the viewers’ imaginations. The form of this object also contrasts dramatically with the rest of the installation, which is predominantly made up of 2D photographs on flat walls.

The title and quintessence of this multi-part installation was inspired by French writer Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage Autour de ma Chambre (Journey Around My Bedroom).

Confined to his room in Turin in the spring of 1790 as a consequence of a duel, De Maistre chose an unlikely pastime; he embarked on a journey around his bedroom and penned the voyage's discoveries for weeks.

Swiss-British writer and philosopher Alain de Botton's book The Art of Travel is easily spotted within Elkoussy's armoire and in a way it links this project's essence most potently with De Maistre's novel.

In The Art of Travel, Botton refers to the Frenchman’s book: "De Maistre's work springs from a profound and suggestive insight: that the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to. If only we could apply a travelling mindset to our own locales, we might find these places becoming no less interesting than the high mountain passes and jungles of South America."

Elkoussy’s exhibition does just that; it sets up a journey of discovery, inspiring viewers to adopt a travelling mindset while touring this installation of downtown Cairo.

This multi-part installation brings about a pang of nostalgia. As you wander back and forth from one wall to the other, navigating the installation’s non-linear narratives, you feel engulfed with things you remember seeing, and others that seem familiar, yet distant. The photographs stir a certain déjà-vu.

Continuing to peer into the large wooden armoire, one spots journals, photographs, a large black leather bag, coloured pencils, a copper ashtray and seashells stacked on the shelves, all the while admiring the diversity of the objects’ form and texture.

And just when you think, at last, an exhibition without political undertones, you spot a stack of newspapers at the bottom drawer of the wooden cabinet, topped with an issue of independent paper Al Masry Al Youm with a large, bold, red headline; "Final Call: Save Egypt." The issue was printed on 29 January, 2011, a day after the notoriously violent "Day of Rage."

Yet this installation is not an exposé of protests and fervently chanting activists. It spotlights the quotidian aspects of daily life in the heart of Cairo. It reflects a collective human experience, which is inevitably politicised in this day and age, inviting us to find new ways of relating to our environments.

In a way this installation is a recipe for the audience to go on a journey of its own, across their living rooms or our neighbourhoods, to re-discover and re-visit truths that surround us.

Programme:
Exhibition runs until 4 June
Mashrabia Gallery
8 Champollion Street, Downtown, Cairo