STUDIO HOURS

Do we write our dreams while we walk the streets? Contributions on collective imaginaries, personal sentiment and destiny interventions, and the relationship between the ritual, the function, and the spectacle, when does a symbol become an icon? We dwell in multiple realms of imagination at the same time, and they reveal themselves through working and learning together; and knowledge becomes a chance to paint again. 

«Studio Hours» workshop started from an interest in conversations on painting, coupled with the simple idea of painters sharing their work in friendly and committed settings. Over seven sessions, Ahmed Hossam, Roba Khedr, Omar Hegazy, Rowan Aldib, Fairouz Eltaweela, and Sabri Shams Al-din collaborated on interpreting a suggested curriculum. Each session had a research question and collection of readings on practice and context (political, social, or economic) in addition to the medium as technique and tool. Researcher Huda Zikry contributed a prompt on what we could possibly need in a studio, and what does it mean to us? Thinking of painting and fine arts started from hypothetical questions on modern art times in Egypt, and followed a timeline that led to current practices. The artworks in this exhibition contemplate various interests in the conditions and routes of production and showing, where do we go when we go to the studio, and who do we meet there?