Fragmented Home #1

Post date: Mar 22, 2010 9:17:46 PM

Cavigelli Artfoyer presents: 

Fragmented Home #1

Lamia Moghazy

Curated by Anca Sinpalean

March 25th - April 1st 2010

Opening: March 24th, 6.30 pm

Lamia Moghazy, artist in residence at the Rote Fabrik, will show at the end of her stay in Zürich a video and sound installation, using photographic snapshots of her room in Alexandria, Egypt. These visual fragments of her "home" will be accompanied by a soundtrack, which will allow us to have an audio "glimpse" into the artist's personal world. 

What happens when this intimate space is being exposed and displayed in the showcase of a gallery, which, by no coincidence, is a space dealing primarily with architecture, a place dedicated to building houses where we could feel at home? Does this exposure of the intimate really reveal truths about the artist's identity, or does it hide it more? Could it be possible that it creates more mystery, confirming that we are in fact inaccessible and never totally transparent, not even to ourselves? The intimate, as psychological interiority is, in Lacanian terms, a territory where we escape the gaze of the Other. It is what we sometimes call "at-home", a place or a state of mind where we feel safe, where there is no need to explain oneself to outsiders. It is a place where we know ourselves best and where we search and constantly redefine our identity. It can take the form of a physical site, like a house, a room, a forest etc, but it can often be interior and subjective, requiring no place in reality. We can feel "at home" in many different ways: in a crowd, in stories, jokes or songs, in the way we wear our cloths or in the routine of saying our name.

We live in a globalized world consumed by the need to see and to be seen. Can art make us question the value and relevance of what is being seen and taken as true "identity"? The artist will leave an ephemeral trace of light and sound in the environment where she spent her last three months, as a visiting artist. Did she happen to feel "at home"?