PhotoCairo6
Exhibitions run from 15 Febraury 2017, 7pm until 23 March 2017
Welcome to Shadows of the Imperceptible, the five-week-long public articulations of the sixth edition of PhotoCairo. It consists of two exhibitions at Contemporary Image Collective (CiC) and Saad Zaghloul Cultural Center as well as performances, screenings, talks, discussions and studio visits in different locations across the city.
A sustained engagement with the context in which artists exchange knowledge, work and exhibit in Egypt has shaped much of the thinking around PhotoCairo’s sixth edition. Rather than working within the limited time frame of festivals, Shadows of the Imperceptible is an ongoing gathering largely consisting of workshops and working and reading groups that started in May 2016. Many of the ideas and questions brought up in this edition have grown out of these education and knowledge exchange settings. Next to works from the workshops and working groups, Shadows of the Imperceptible also contains a number of newly commissioned artworks by local artists whose practices engage with related concerns.
Thematically, Shadows of the Imperceptible explores the tension between the visible and the invisible, what is seen and what is withheld from sight. PhotoCairo6 brings together works, arguments, artists, and thinkers that experiment with and reflect upon claims to reveal, investigate or bring to light through art. These claims are often associated with ideologically loaded histories. They give rise to questions around the agency of the subject-body, the embedded position of the artist and present networks of image circulation. Faced with these questions, Shadows of the Imperceptible looks into the refusal to represent, the moments of silence, the withheld and the opaque in contemporary image practices.
A series of texts is published in parallel with the sixth edition of PhotoCairo. Shadows of the Imperceptible - Booklets extends the discussion to include cultural and social institutions and brings more critical voices to reflect upon the prevailing economies of visibility.
For a detailed program visit the CiC website.