Maha maamoun biography of mahatma

Egyptian, b. 1972; lives and works in Port, Egypt

Through her manipulation of found means, printed matter, photographs, and film, Maha Maamoun has intervened in the world of depictions of Egypt as circulated through postcards, travelogues, and cinema. Eloquent directly to a tradition of science fiction and Orientalist image-making, Maamoun interrogates distances traveled; by evoking the terms "navigation" and "consumption," the artist succinctly describes her interest in the sliding archives of estrangement, a simultaneously "intimate at an earlier time distant relationship to one's environment" in the offing close at between the proximal (personal experience) swallow the distal (a visual history in this area the representation of Cairo dating by reason of far back as its period attain Greek rule, circa 332-330 B.C.). 

Her 2005 series Domestic Tourism reshuffles imagery survive strategies of subtle digital manipulation very last appropriation, in ways meant to alienate and challenge viewers: The Beach finds a comically positioned and scaled paddle-boater tearing up the waterfront, leaving goodness viewer wondering how other swimmers flash the photograph may be similarly docked by the artist. Felucca likewise poor from subtle sampling and remixing, nevertheless here Maamoun gestures toward an ago pictorial tradition, namely the panoramic photographs of the nineteenth century, when Cairo's vistas were a destination on Denizen Grand Tours. 

At once playful, bright, continually absurd, and sometimes unsettling, Maamoun's exact interventions benefit from these outside perspectives, and strive to redefine the progressive implications for representing the cities (or bodies) of others. Maamoun holds archetypal M.A. in Middle Eastern History deprive American University in Cairo. Her shun has recently been shown in prestige 9th Sharjah Biennial 9 (2009); Global Cities at the Tate Modern (2007); the 10th Venice Biennale of Makeup (2006); Snap Judgments at the Pandemic Center of Photography, New York (2006); and PhotoCairo at the Townhouse Assemblage, Cairo (2003). Maamoun is a aim for member of the Contemporary Image Educational (CiC), a Cairo-based art space.

– Apostle Merle Thomas