When the local government in Luxor, Egypt, demolished Sherin Guirguis’s family home in 2007 to widen a road and accommodate the growing tourist industry, it was the final straw.
She was born in the Luxor property, and although she only lived in it until she was 3 years old, it was the last remaining tie to her homeland. Now, it exists only in her memory and a few faded photographs.
Guirguis left Egypt more than two decades ago to live and work in the United States. Throughout her career she has explored her Egyptian heritage in the context of western artistic traditions. This notion of memory and domestic identity is evident in a new exhibition that opened in Dubai’s The Third Line gallery last week.
In her show El Bait El Kabir, she uses her demolished birthplace to question ideas of belonging and identity, as well as the converse notion of displacement and her experience as an Egyptian-American immigrant.
“The loss of that architectural site was a final physical displacement from home for me,” she says. “And because the memories I have of it are vague, this is a reimagining of the space rather than a documentation of the site itself.”
In that regard, the exhibition takes on the feel of a domestic space – the paintings are “portals” into that space. They are works on paper that take on the shapes of sacred geometry prevalent in many ancient cultures of the East. Guirguis has cut a latticed layer into each one and then allowed bright paint to splash and bleed over the edges, a stark distinction to the control she exerts over the rest of the work.
The works are also dissected with darts of solid colour, which she says take inspiration from Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, who used architectural form in his work. For Guirguis, they break up the formal system she has set up, and give the work another dimension.
The show also includes sculptures, which are small and could almost be household ornaments, but are a further exploration of shape and form.
The exhibition is pulled together by a Rumi poem that is printed on the wall, which begins: “I am not of the East, nor of the West,” and ends with the sentence: “I have seen that the two worlds are one.”
“This struck me because in the end, I realised the home is carried with you,” says Guirguis. “It is in the relationship you have with other people or objects and memories and I think that is a sentiment many people can relate to.”
• Sherin Guirguis’s El Bait El Kabir is at The Third Line until December 10. For more details, visit www.thethirdline.com
aseaman@thenational.ae
