© Hossam Meshmashi

THE ROOM

AMAL EL KENAWY | YOUNG ARAB THEATER FUND

An echo chamber, a black room and a camera obscura, the room of Egyptian visual artist and videographer Amal El Kenawy allows the most intimate and poetic images to take shape and become reality. A wedding dress being sewn, a beating heart adorned with white flowers and subjected to the assaults of the needle. Yes, marriage is an attachment, making for a disturbing correspondence between the woman seen all alone onstage and the image being projected, between the real situation and its perception.

Details

Amal El Kenawy reveals in dazzling visions of the sometimes insidious meanings of this attachment, and shows that every human being carries within a secret room where the world is viewed quite differently, where under the bride’s veil an identity is distorted as it dissolves in a renunciation of self. A reflection on the subjugated body and on the gradual disintegration of the self within the ties of marriage, the piece combines theatre and video to direct our gaze toward the unveiled Orient.

Credits

CONCEPT, DIRECTION, ACTING, VIDEO SHOOTING AND EDITING
AMAL EL KENAWY

MUSIC
THOMAS JEKER

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
ABDEL GHANY EL KENAWY

PRODUCTION
YOUNG ARAB THEATER FUND
CAIRO