"Museum as Hub" Exhibition
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
This event has ended.
The concept of neighborhood in Cairo stretches far beyond a simple geographical designation on the city map. Cairo’s neighborhoods are urban structures that have incorporated the specific characteristics of their inhabitants in their identities. Nestled in the heart of downtown Cairo, the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art shares its most immediate surroundings with the neglected nineteenth-century Said Halim’s Palace, numerous car mechanics’ garages, coffee shops, greengrocers, and carpenters. Downtown Cairo amalgamates architectural patterns of various eras, modifying and sometimes obscuring their original characteristics. Despite the urban disorder, this incongruity of styles and histories pave the way for an unusual and intriguing mixture of identity. Throughout the years, this neighborhood called Antikhana has experienced a symbiotic coexistence between artists, writers, intellectuals, and conservative male workers from the “lanes,” the streets surrounding the Townhouse Gallery.
[Image:Ayman Ramadan, Koshary Min Zamman Installation view, (2008) photographs, koshary cups, t-shirts, stickers]
Courtesy Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo
Media
Schedule
from July 10, 2008 to September 21, 2008