Collaboration: Art Jameel and The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Maha Maamoun: Select works in video and photography
Project Space Art Jameel
September 13, 7:00pm to 9:00pm: Opening night – open to the public
September 14 – October 12, 2017: Exhibition
September 27, 6:30pm to 7:30pm: Maha Maamoun in conversation with Shumon Basar
At Nadi Al Quoz as part of Alserkal Lates
In 2017, Art Jameel began an institutional partnership with The Met aiming to raise the profile of contemporary Middle Eastern artists and increase international dialogue. Maha Maamoun’s video and photo series featured in this exhibition were the first works to be acquired by the New York museum through this collaboration.
2026 overlaps a remake of the memorable image of the time traveller in Chris Marker’s La Jetée with an excerpt from a contemporary science-fiction Egyptian novel titled The Revolution of 2053: The Beginning. 2026 runs on an eternal loop and is composed of different pictorial and textual sources that keep running back to the zero hour where the future is on repeat.
The four-part series Domestic Tourism I is inspired by generic and idealized images of Egypt, whether promotional touristic images or in Egyptian cinema. These images are presented through four motifs: Park, Beach, Cairo by Night, and Felluca.
Project Space Art Jameel, Warehouse 48, The Yard, Alserkal Avenue
Hours: Saturday to Thursday from 10:00am – 6:00pm
Maha Maamoun lives in Cairo, where she has been working as an artist since the early 2000s. Her practice is primarily focussed on videos and photographs and the function of images that are found in mainstream culture. Her work acts as a lens through which familiar images are seen in new and insightful ways. Maamoun often uses high and low brow images—ranging from YouTube footage to excerpts from bootleg 1950s Egyptian films.
Working primarily in photography and video, Maha Maamoun’s work has been presented by many institutions worldwide including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; ICP, New York; New Museum, New York; MuHKA, Antwerp; MATHAF – Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Beirut Art Center, Beirut; Makan, Amman; Swteirischer Herbst, Graz; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Her work was also shown in biennials and festivals including the 6th Dak’art Biennial, Dakar; Bamaco 03, Mali; 9th Gwangju Biennale; Sharjah Biennial 10; Transmediale 2014, Berlin and 64th Berlinale, Berlin. Maamoun’s solo shows include Lingering in Vicinity, Gypsum Gallery, The Night of Counting the Years, Fridericianum, Kassel in 2014 and The Laws of Existence at Sursock Museum, Beirut. In addition to her art practice, she has curated and partook in the curating of arts projects in the Middle East and Europe. She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) – an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. Maha Maamoun’s works are in private and public collections including Deutsche Bank, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Bonnefantenmuseum, MuHKA, Sharjah Art Foundation, Barjeel Art Foundation and FRAC – Poitou Charentes.