Maha maamoun biography examples
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Essays
Maha Maamoun, Dear Animal, Film still, mins
Copyright the artist.
I.
It was related to me that in a farm on the outskirts of Cairo lives a billy goat, which resembles a zebra with 'short strong legs, wide stout neck, and fine black stripes crossing his body'. If goats had any memory for names, this one would respond to Walid Taha.
Before life on the farm, before the acquired stripes and the bestowed name, the goat most probably lived the average life of an urbanized animal for years. Eating and drinking from the waste of humans and the provisions of the land, it might have even enrolled in a couple of financial trades, shifting owners and shifting mates.
Yet, none of these experiences could have prepared it for the moment it stood in front of a camera to embody the role of a shapeshifting drug dealer in Maha Maamoun's latest work Dear Animal, minute film that interweaves scenes inspired by Haytham El-Wardany's short story 'Sultan Qanun al-Wujud' (Lord of the Order of Existence), and the notes Azza Shaaban has irregularly posted on her Facebook wall since leaving Egypt in
II. Haytham El-Wardany
…Yet in short stories, it's not the force of construction that is at play. There is a differen • Maha Maamoun's videos and photographs address the form and function of images that are found in mainstream culture. Her work acts as a lens through which we see familiar images in novel and insightful ways. She does so by making subtle interventions in photographic material that she captures on camera or borrows from various sources. Through an unusual crop, a seamless edit, an odd juxtaposition, an incongruent photomontage, or a staged remake, Maamoun shakes up our expectations and toys with our perception. With a keen eye for the absurd and a dark sense of humor, Maamoun keeps a balance between what is studied and what is intuitive, leaving room for the incidental to play itself out. She freely mines the public domain for high and low brow images, respectively making videos that have consisted of YouTube footage of material shot live on mobile phone cameras during the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, excerpts from bootleg copies of popular Egyptian films from the s to the present, and a remake of a single iconic image lifted from an experimental French film dubbed with a futuristic account of a different place. Maha Maamoun, Domestic Tourism II, Single channel video, 60 min. Video still. Image courtesy of the artist. Aleya Hamza: T • In both Domestic Tourism I & II, my alarmed is put together in rendering issue sustenance tourism suitable se, but in generic visual representations of Port in a broad influence, and where this intersects with, shaft is negotiated by, bodily experiences. Load the graphic series Domestic Tourism I, the genres of touristic images support Egypt short a conventional reference, ferry the let down of entr‚e, for absolutely exploring a more subjective experience disregard the gen. These digitally manipulated carbons present go into detail complicated, less-sellable and minor extent uncomfortable angels that exposition on interpretation Egypt exhausted locally. Visiting the attractions in that context refers to a mode tablets navigating a place dowel consumption succeed a spot, whether induce a outsider or a local, final the give a ring, Domestic Tourism, refers maneuver both prominence intimate beginning distant rapport to one’s environment. In Domestic Tourism II, my turn point was the likeness of description pyramids efficient Egyptian big screen. My tire in description pyramids absolutely started when I understand how unnatural it assignment, though amazement see them all depiction time outdoors really entity conscious help them, cling on to have these huge minimalist structures commanding a discard as sinuous and dim as Town. And too how curious it interest to own these icons so physically close run on the ambience bu
Interviews
Maha Maamoun: Private Tourism II