Project Presentation
This project began with snapshots of spaces that I have found myself visiting and revisiting over the last few years. At one point, I realized that what might have attracted me to these spaces was that they reminded me of others; that they triggered a series of memories and associations. In an attempt to articulate the content of these memories and associations, I decided to start constructing settings that corresponded to them, settings which I would then photograph. The resulting images ended up constituting the second element in each of these triptychs.
In trying to be as precise as possible, I realized that the certainty with which I was able to construct and produce these images did not translate to my final photographs, that I no longer recognized my constructions, nor was I certain of their sources. This brought about the idea to approach these photographs in a removed manner – as if they were found or produced by someone else – and use them as a point of departure for another artwork, one which eventually became what is presented here as the third and final element in each of these triptychs.
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Iman Issa (born 1979, Cairo) is an artist living and working in Cairo and New York. Her most recent solo and group exhibitions include The Ungovernables, New Museum, New York, Abstract Possible, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, Material, Rodeo, Istanbul; Seeing is believing, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin; Short Stories, SculptureCenter, New York; and Propaganda by Monuments, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo. Her video work has been screened at several venues including Tate Modern, London; Spacex, Exeter; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; and Bidoun Artists Cinema. Her book Thirty-three Stories about Reasonable Characters in Familiar Places was published in September 2011 by the SculptureCenter in New York.
