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RELOCATED IDENTITIES Part 1		

Overexposure
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Peripheral Stories (2005, 28min)

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HALA ELKOUSSY  b. Egypt 1974 
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The point of departure of my work is how identity is constructed,
transformed and expressed through the making, coding and consumption
of an image. Within the parameters of a visual culture which is
trying to come to terms with an inherited discouragement of
figurative representation, there is a continuous feeding-off,
assimilation, recycling and adaptation of western popular and mass
media imagery. Control of the content of news, literature, and art
production manifests itself officially through stringent censorship
laws, and unofficially through conservative currents that direct
public life and foster self-censorship. Existing within a cultural
system in which the photographic, except in the context of family
photography and advertising, is viewed with skepticism, even feared,
my practice attempts to coin a personal/public language. I take my
cue from the codes of mainstream modes of visual expression, such as
advertising, and proceed to push the boundaries of the
'photographable' and the 'photogenic'. Meanwhile, I attempt to break
down and question socially transfixed roles and the process of social
integration/marginalisation of difference. My work is largely framed
in the 'art world' according to my place of origin and background as
a Middle-Eastern woman. I am quite aware of the inevitability of such
classifications in the absence of local informed critical readings.
'Peripheral' art history is still authored in the 'centre'. The
'unknown' tends to be read as a collective to simplify the process of
assimilation and the processing of information about the unknown
'other'. In my work, I build-in mechanisms which work against
readings that reinforce and perpetuate preconceived reductionist
ideas about my concerns as an individual. I attempt to broaden the
viewer's experience of an artwork from the 'periphery' as more than
just a product of geography and politics, but as a fluid space for
the interplay of personal, social, conceptual and aesthetic
concerns.


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Hala Elkoussy is concerned with pushing the boundaries of the
'photographable' and the 'photogenic' as she questions socially
transfixed roles and the process of social integration/
marginalisation of difference. In her latest work Peripheral Stories,
she uses photography and video to explore the edges of the city.
Geographical peripheries become the stage on which an investigation
of less tangible issues of marginalisation takes place. Although not
explicitly political, Elkoussy's work inevitably generates political
reflection, and, on occasion, has generated media outcry. She is
co-founder of the Contemporary Image Collective, an independent,
artist-run platform based in Cairo, dedicated to the visual image.
She taught photography at the American University in Cairo and has
been actively involved in organising and curating several projects
including PhotoCairo (2003) and In A Furnished Flat In Cairo (2004).
Her work has been shown in Bamako, Beijing, Cairo, Dakar, Ramallah,
Taipei and several European cities. She is currently an artist in
residence at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunste, Amsterdam.


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