Colony - Latitude is the first in a fifteen-part art project by Shady El Noshokaty. It consists of a sculpture, drawings, diagrams and an animated video. Like his previous multi-faceted projects, it takes an intimate personal experience as an entry point to explore the relationship between minds, physical existence and the imagination. Latitude began from exploring the form of a skin discoloration that marks the artist’s hand. He conducted an extensive online research to locate 15 existing towns, cities and islands that match the contours of his birthmark. He then began collecting and ordering primary information about these sites, their history, language, arts and culture, their topography and geography as a basis for a possible imaginary colonization project. Latitude acts as a manifesto for this project, borrowing its methodology from archiving and topographical research.
Born in 1971 in Damietta, El Noshokaty is a visual artist based in Cairo. His projects have been featured in numerous museums and international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, Venice; Hayward Gallery and Tate Modern, London; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; FACT, Liverpool and l`Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. El Noshokaty holds a BA (1994) and PhD (2007) in the philosophy of art education from the Faculty of Art Education at Helwan University. He has played a key role in the field of art education in Egypt. In addition to an associate professorship at the American University in Cairo, he organized ten editions of an annual non-profit Media Art and Creativity workshop and in 2010 established a pioneering non-profit dedicated to alternative media practices called ASCII foundation for contemporary art education.
[This video was produced by Medrar TV and is featured in partnership with Jadaliyya Culture]