Monuments & Flowers brings together a selection of seminal video work culled from the archives of ArteEast with the work of contemporary voices.
Curated by Regine Basha
Monuments & Flowers draws from the particularly accelerated ebb and flow of destruction and construction, death and regeneration — of cities, of ideologies, of nationalities, of quotidian life and ecosystems — that the region termed the ‘Middle East’ is continually undergoing. The artists selected here internalize this state of constant flux, employing both fictional and diaristic narratives while collapsing the hyper-real with the surreal. Scenes from daily life become infused with a subconscious overlay of desire, fear, alienation or utopian longings. Through highly evocative mixed use of time-based media; ranging from found super 8mm, to stained celluloid, to CGI, many of the works lean towards a retro-futurist lens that is highly attentive to the minutiae and habits of locale, yet slippery in its chronology.
Hand-Me-Downs, 2011
Yto Barrada (Morocco)
Keyword Searches for Dust, 2009
Malak Helmy (Egypt)
Don’t Touch Me Tomatoes & Chachacha, 2013
Lara Baladi (Egypt/Lebanon)
What Things May Come, 2019
Marianne Fahmy (Egypt)
Most Fabulous Place, 2008
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Domestic Tourism II, 2009
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Monuments & Flowers was curated as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 15 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
After the great flood of the delta, a future oceanographer tells the story of the people's relocation to the confidential camps in the Sahara desert.
About the Filmmaker
Born in 1992, Marianne Fahmy lives and works in Alexandria, Egypt. She earned her BA in Painting from Alexandria University, Egypt. She studied at Mass Alexandria independent art program in 2016.
Fahmy works with installation and film. Her focus is on undocumented histories related to people, architecture, and language. Her current work revolves around the history of water, where she finds possibilities for creative additions, that transform prescribed conventional narratives into a boundless by time artwork. In conversation with scientists and urban planners, she adds believability to the fabricated narratives she creates, where she combines science, historical events, and myths to imagine a future society to come.
Her work was part of 7th Yokohama triennial in Japan, the 13th Havana Biennale in 2019, Dakar Biennale in 2018, and Manifesta 13th in 2020. Her films has screened at Nurnberg Contemporary Art Museum, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, Germany, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, Postmasters Gallery, New York, and the Museum of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- Year2019
- Runtime12 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, arabic
- CountryEgypt
- DirectorMarianne Fahmy
- Executive ProducerMorphadat
- MusicTarek Hussein
Monuments & Flowers brings together a selection of seminal video work culled from the archives of ArteEast with the work of contemporary voices.
Curated by Regine Basha
Monuments & Flowers draws from the particularly accelerated ebb and flow of destruction and construction, death and regeneration — of cities, of ideologies, of nationalities, of quotidian life and ecosystems — that the region termed the ‘Middle East’ is continually undergoing. The artists selected here internalize this state of constant flux, employing both fictional and diaristic narratives while collapsing the hyper-real with the surreal. Scenes from daily life become infused with a subconscious overlay of desire, fear, alienation or utopian longings. Through highly evocative mixed use of time-based media; ranging from found super 8mm, to stained celluloid, to CGI, many of the works lean towards a retro-futurist lens that is highly attentive to the minutiae and habits of locale, yet slippery in its chronology.
Hand-Me-Downs, 2011
Yto Barrada (Morocco)
Keyword Searches for Dust, 2009
Malak Helmy (Egypt)
Don’t Touch Me Tomatoes & Chachacha, 2013
Lara Baladi (Egypt/Lebanon)
What Things May Come, 2019
Marianne Fahmy (Egypt)
Most Fabulous Place, 2008
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Domestic Tourism II, 2009
Maha Maamoun (Egypt)
Monuments & Flowers was curated as part of the ArteEast legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, preserving and presenting over 15 years of film and video programming by ArteEast.
After the great flood of the delta, a future oceanographer tells the story of the people's relocation to the confidential camps in the Sahara desert.
About the Filmmaker
Born in 1992, Marianne Fahmy lives and works in Alexandria, Egypt. She earned her BA in Painting from Alexandria University, Egypt. She studied at Mass Alexandria independent art program in 2016.
Fahmy works with installation and film. Her focus is on undocumented histories related to people, architecture, and language. Her current work revolves around the history of water, where she finds possibilities for creative additions, that transform prescribed conventional narratives into a boundless by time artwork. In conversation with scientists and urban planners, she adds believability to the fabricated narratives she creates, where she combines science, historical events, and myths to imagine a future society to come.
Her work was part of 7th Yokohama triennial in Japan, the 13th Havana Biennale in 2019, Dakar Biennale in 2018, and Manifesta 13th in 2020. Her films has screened at Nurnberg Contemporary Art Museum, Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, Germany, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, Postmasters Gallery, New York, and the Museum of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- Year2019
- Runtime12 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, arabic
- CountryEgypt
- DirectorMarianne Fahmy
- Executive ProducerMorphadat
- MusicTarek Hussein