PAST EXHIBITION

In the Shadow of the Pyramids

  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids
  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids
  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids
  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids
  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids
  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids
  • In the Shadow of the Pyramids

Art Heritage presents “In the Shadow of the Pyramids” an exhibition that reflects Egyptian photographer, Laura El-Tantawy’s intensely personal nine-year journey of entrenched reportage surrounding the events of the ‘January 25 Revolution’ at Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Conceptualised as an audio-visual installation, with large video screens, framed photographs and audio tracks, the exhibition is an immersive experience that presents Tantawy’s unique compendium of protest imagery at a time of expanding social media forums. The accompanying exhibition catalog includes Tantawy’s poems written between 2005 and 2013. Along with her images they become a testimony of the sweeping events that brought about a euphoric moment in Tahrir Square when freedom and democracy were on the cusp of becoming a reality to a people who had been denied a voice for many years. Tantawy then goes on to memorialize, in telling images, the following years when despair overtook the nation and their hopes were belied. Curator Rahaab Allana’s text provides a commentary on how images such as Tantawy’s, that seek to capture the live moment in all its truthfulness, are subject to distortion, in an age when multiple mediums and technology can manipulate images to tell their own version of happenings. So what ultimately, is the truth?

Opening in August, a month that marks India’s 70th year of Independence, the works stir our collective conscience around the question: Have we actually achieved the kind of freedom we fought for?

The exhibition has been jointly curated and designed by Laura El-Tantawy and Rahaab Allana.

Date

25 Aug - 20 Sep 2017

Medium

Photography