Tea Cups videos at Bibliotecha Art Centre, Alexandria, Egypt, Aug 23 – Sept 23, 2017

Green tea cup: collectivities and Yellow tea cup: refugees at sea are part of Les Instants Vidéo’s programming for the 2nd Art Video Forum exhibition appearing at the Bibliotecha Art Centre in Alexandria, Egypt from August 23 to September 23, 2017.

Exhibition statement by curator Marc Mercier:

For the 2nd Video Art Exhibition of Alexandria, we state that Video art is Hypathia + electricity.

Hypatia of Alexandria, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher was murdered in 415 by the enemies of science and thought. Each time I come to Alexandria, I can feel Hypatia’s heartbeat in each woman I meet. This is how I fall in love with the city and its inhabitants.

In 2017, intelligence and knowledge are still threatened all over the world, and even more if it is embodied by women. This is why I choose to pay a tribute to all the nowadays Hypatia who express their sensitive intelligence with art. Ten artworks forming a choir from which emerges an emancipation song, sometimes serious, sometimes happy. Video art is Hypatia + electricity.

A western tradition holds that pictorial art is a window open on the world, as if the world had been created to please human eye. But things can be seen differently. For instance, thinking about the famous construction in Gourna (a village next to Luxor) build by the architect from Alexandria Hassan Fathy. A large barred window allows the daylight to reach the walls and the ground. The eye doesn’t face outward but inward. These ten artworks stand at the conjunction of these two possible movements of the eye, inside/outside, the inner/the other, the intimate/the world..
The specificity of video art may also lies at this intersection.

Match (2015) / Esméralda da Costa (Portugal / France)
Green tea cup: collectivities (6’25 – 2017) / Cheryl Pagurek (Canada)
Yellow Tea Cup: Refugees at Sea (2’58 – 2016) / Cheryl Pagurek (Canada)
Last Words (4′ – 2017) / Nicène Kossentini (Tunisia)
Preface to Damyang Pavilion2 (3′ – 2014) / Yeh YiLi (Taïwan)
Future in the Past (7’07 – 2015) / Susanne Wiegner (Germany)
Positions (10’20 – 2016) / Kristina Paustian (Russia/Germany)
Affordable Dreams (6′ – 2017) / Sandrine Deumier (France)
Dadaloop (10’ – 2015) / Francesca Fini (Italy)
Greffes / Graft (2012) Samar Elbaraouy (Egypt)