FIGURAS DE LA MEMORIA, 2023
View of the exhibition, 6 min 2 – channels video installation displayed at the Licorera during the Cali International Dance Biennial, 2023, featuring Egyptian dancers Amina Abouelghar, Eman Hussein, and Samar Ezzat (on the left) and Afro-Colombian dancer Andrea Bonilla (on the right). Music by Youssra El Hawary featuring singers Nany Garcia (Guapi) and Sodfa Kamel (Cairo).
Céline Burnand and the dancers sought to revive the invisible bodies of history, by replacing them within emblematic architectures of the colonial project in ruins and evoking the failure of such enterprises, or the damage they caused, not only to the local populations but also to nature and intangible heritage (indigenous and ancestral knowledge). The initial work was developed based on textual and photographic archives. The work process was carried out by translating the archives into keywords, images, visions, and characters that the dancers then bring to life through their practices and their own movements. The circulation and exchange of ideas and images then emerge in the act of dance, a kind of catharsis for the dancer filmed by Céline Burnand. These collaborative processes give rise to an exchange of knowledge and experiences, of cultures, a confrontation, a profound dialogue, mental and physical, that the artists would like to extend to the spectator
THE HOUSE OF THE LIVING + Epilogue, with English subtitles (2021)
Film (15:02) displayed during the exhibition Retour à Helwan – La Maison des vivants, Photoforum, Bienne, 2021.
LA MAISON DES VIVANTS, French version (2020)
Film (09.12) displayed during the exhibition La Maison des vivants, Festival IMAGES, VEVEY, 2020 around the history of the sanatorium Al Hayat established in 1926 in Helwan (without the epilogue > see the English version above)
RETOUR A HELWAN – The Patients (2021)
Part of a 3-channels installation displayed during the exhibition Retour à Helwan – La Maison des vivants, Photoforum, Bienne, 2021. Featuring Amina Abouelghar, Eman Hussein, and Samar Ezzat.
RETOUR A HELWAN – The Inspectors (2021)
Part of a 3-channels installation displayed during the exhibition Retour à Helwan-La Maison des vivants, Photoforum, Bienne, 2021. Featuring Hossam Zaki, Yahia Dabbous, Ihab Khelfa.
RETOUR A HELWAN – Into the walls (2021)
Part of a 3-channels installation displayed during the exhibition Retour à Helwan-La Maison des vivants, Photoforum, Bienne, 2021. Featuring the Sanatorium Fouad in Helwan.
BREACH (2018) / شرخ
Video collaboration with dancer Kanny Abdallah Mohamed around the theme of the body freedom within the city landscape, followed by a live performance at Goethe Institute Dokki choreographed by Aly Khamees with Kanny Abdallah Mohamed and Mohand Qader (Off Biennale Cairo 2018)
LOOKING FOR A RIFA’I (2017)
This film is the result of a research on snake handlers in Egypt between July 2016 and March 2017, in the context of my master in visual and media anthropology in FU Berlin.
KNIFE DANCE (2017)
Video collaboration with dancer Kanny Abdallah Mohamed on shaaby music
I LIKE EGYPTIAN MEN, EGYPTIAN MEN LIKE ME (2017)
Performance I like Egyptian men, Egyptian men like me, Bayt el Sinnari, Cairo, 18th February 2017, inspired by Joseph Beuys’ performance I like America and America likes me (1974 Beuys flew to New York and was taken by ambulance to the site of the performance, a room in the René Block Gallery at 409 West Broadway, he shared this room with a coyote, for eight hours over three days. The performance continuously shifted between elements that were required by the realities of the situation, and elements that had a purely symbolic character). This performance is a logical continuum of my recent research about snakes. For most of the Egyptians I know, the term rifa’i evokes individuals that people can call to get rid of snakes that might have crawled into their homes. However, this term originally comes from the name of Ahmed al-Rifa’i, the founder of the Rifa’iyya, one of the most influential Sufi orders in Egypt. As a matter of fact, the snake handlers and the people I work with during this research are essentially male, which confronts me, as both foreign and female, with conflicted and contested places of being and acting, both in the rifa’i world and the secular one. Therefore, I envision this performance as a symbolic reenactment of these conflicted relationships, where projections, expectations, censorship, fear and desire of the other are intricately bound.
BURIAL (2017)
A performance filmed by Sherif El-Azma in Cairo after the death of the snakes.
BUT THE WORLD IS PERISHABLE AND SO IS ITS BLISS (2017)
Film in progress. Snakes practices and parallel relationships in the sufi and secular world in Egypt.
LANDLINE (2016)
This film is based on regular visits at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, reflecting the conflicts at stake within the daily life of Egyptian people through images of antiques statues and objects displayed for the pleasure of the visitors.
APOTROPOS II (2016)
I went back to Cocullo in 2015 and was invited by Alfredo and his daughter Martina to join them on the day of the festival of the snakes.
APOTROPOS (2015)
I first went to Cocullo, a small village in Italy, in April 2014. I wanted to take pictures of the snake festival of the San Domenico, after reading “The Ritual of the Snake” by Aby Warburg. I happened to film Alfredo, one of the serpari or snake catchers of the area.