Here is Cairo

Listen with your heart to the voice of nostalgia and leave yourself back to the past.

Ahmed Emam is a Bahrain-based Egyptian visual artist who participated at the 43rd Bahrain Annual Fine Arts Exhibition. He received a BA degree in Fine Arts with a major in printmaking and pre-master’s degree in 2006 from Fine Arts from Cairo, Egypt. Since early 2004, Ahmed is working as an artist, graphic designer, interior designer and art director. He has won awards and acquisitions in Japan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

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Ahmed’s artworks seek to evoke ideas of loss, memory and nostalgia. He is born and raised in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The busy city with its rich heritage and multi-culture facets inspired him as an artist to explore the world around him and train his imagination to aspire to the undefined.

Entitled “Here is Cairo”, the key elements of his art installation are nostalgia, sound, eye of providence, globe, pyramids and infinity. “I am innately very nostalgic. I have always been fascinated with memory, nostalgia and sentiment embodied in certain things. The way people feel compelled to take photos, listen to sound the way tangible things contribute to our sense of identity throughout our lives”. Ahmed believes that personal subjective histories are not recorded in the same way that the history of countries are in history books; these unspoken histories exist in memories of others and the physical traces of their lives on the spaces and objects around them. Spaces and objects embody a beauty in the marks of time passing. “My artworks explore the way these tangible artifacts or emotional experiences of memory can intimately personify our identities”.

By creating this artwork, Ahmed seeks to illicit a conversation with his viewer about desire for preservation of self-identity. Here is Cairo explores the magic of heritage in a new contemporary vision while giving ‘rebirth’ to old and traditional icons. Through his artwork, he tries to bring to life the beauty of old times, the depth of memorable images in a modern and unique vision. ν

For more information: Tel: +973 1729 9831

Email: Ahmed.Emam@culture.gov.bh

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