The sculpture Cairo 2 looks at the contemporary city. The texts are from “The Yacoubian Building by Ala Aswany. In this book Aswany through the prism and microcosm of the occupants of a particular residence in Cairo examined the post Nasser revolutionary period of Cairo. The repression and endemic corruption that blights the lives of the inhabitants bursts forth in to a full scale revolt after this book was published. The novel examines the shift in the ruling elites and in some senses anticipates the current revolutionary events that have befallen the city. The other novel in this sculpture “Metro” A story of Cairo, by Magdy El Shafee is a comic book novel and one that takes place amongst the violence and unrest of the Cairo of today. Some excerpts of these pages line the banks of the Nile inside the sculpture, The colored imagery is from the graffiti art that adorns the walls of the city, the picture portraits that are visible are paintings of the disappeared, the many young victims of the forces of repression. Selected texts from “The Yacoubian Building” have been cut through these images. Around the circumference of the sculpture the text has been cut rough in Arabic.
The sculpture sits on top of a cut out Islamic form from The Mosque of Al-Salih Tala’i, a 14th Century mosque in Cairo.
