Memory Box

On Noise, Sound & Silence
Three-Channel Video Installation & Memory Box
55th Venice Biennale – Maldives Pavilion

The Memory Box
Memory Box (sculptural elements) consists of bronze pieces, each representing an

indispensable object that is paramount in the completion of the virtual voyage.

The camera: this is a cast of my father’s camera. This is the 6×6 camera that he carried when I was a child. It looked like the 35 mm cameras. I still keep many family negatives in my archive. My father took pictures for me and for my mother brother and it stayed in function until I was fifteen years of age.

The watch: a replica of my father’s watch; I used to borrow my father’s watch till I got my first watch at the age of eleven; a pick-pocket robbed me of it one afternoon in Dokki, a suburb of Cairo, while visiting my cousins.

The Shell: this shell is similar to a shell that my grandmother used as an ashtray; she passed away when I was seven years old, and I do remember her vividly. My parents were both working and I spent most of my days with her in her large ground floor apartment and garden. My aunt –who was gorgeous and single– used to smoke in hiding and stubs he cigarettes there; I was my aunt’s favourite child and the only one who kept her secret.

The pebble; in fact a very small shell: this is a cast of a shell that I found in Alexandria when I was 15, and it stayed with me for 34 years. My uncle had a cabin on Roshdy Beach, a beach once for the bourgeoisie in Alexandria but now long since a public beach.

The Coca Cola Bottle: this is a cast of the old shapes/forms of the bottles of the late sixties and early seventies, now back in fashion in the same size. Back then, as a child, Egypt adopted a Soviet model of socialism, and the cola drinks were absolutely tasteless, but it was a bonus for us at the end of the hot day on the beach.