My Portable Sculptures is a work or a group of works which can be made and produced almost anywhere and portable enough to be carried on oneself and set up anywhere. Due to the nature of my cross-cultural heritage and semi-nomadic life, I am interested in exploring the relationships between self, place and belonging and have been producing work on the move, responding to different spaces and circumstances.
These pieces carry their own history and DNA and are placed in different environments as installations responding, merging and adapting to the space and creating a dialogue. A patchwork of interconnecting lines, places, and cultural influences, leading out in different directions, layering themes, and interconnecting events.
My references have been Marcel Duchamp’s Museum in a Box(1935-41), Mohamed Hafez’s A Refugee Nation (2015), his multi-media installation UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage (2017) and Green Zone(2019), as well as Louise Bourgeois’ portable totem-shaped sculptures, which she assembled and reassembled, representing herself and people she had left behind when she moved.
Making these works, I use different materials and techniques: knitting, collage and screen printing, working with found materials and archiving personal slides and images as well as working with video.
Knitting, stitching, and weaving resonates with me as these skills were passed down from my Egyptian grandmother, a portable method of making. I can make these pieces sitting on trains or planes. Reflecting on my own experience, my multicultural identity, as well as the collective experiences of movement, migration, displacement, belonging and fitting in or standing out.