Amal Kenawy

Amal Kenawy was born in 1974 in Cairo, Egypt. Their collaboration resulted in a large number of artworks ranging from sculptures, compositions and videos. Amal married Shady Elnoshokaty, a contemporary artist who helped her at the beginning of her career. After they divorced Amal lived with her son, Yassin. Her solo work drew upon a more intimate approach. She used her own body alongside representations of fragile materials, animals and objects, to express mental and physical pain and address themes such as birth, marriage, death, dreams and memory. Amal Kenawy died on August 19, 2012, at the age of 38 after a long battle with leukemia. She was an iconic female artist, respected for her creativity and deep devotion to her work, though tragically short-lived. Her work is collected by major public collection, such as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar and the Sharjah Art Foundation in the UAE, and exhibited in major biennials such as Dakar Biennale and Sharjah Biennial. == Notable works ==

• 2002 Frozen Memory, video, photograph and sculpture composition • 2004 The Room, performance • 2004 The Journey, video performance and wax sculpture featuring Amal wearing a white dress and floating above the floor of the room in which she is confined, only to later drop heavily on her feet to resume twirling and floating again • 2006 You Will Be Killed, video animation and paintings == The Room (2004) ==

The Room (2004) is a single-channel video and simultaneous live-action performance that was exhibited at Darat al Funun: The Khalid Shoman Exhibition in Amman, Jordan. The video, lasting approximately ten minutes in duration, entails several scenes with bridal-themed imagery. These include a scene with a woman hanging from a tree wearing the structure of an old-fashioned gown, a bride laying amongst wool and candles in a bed, and the lace-gloved hands of a woman whose face is concealed shown slowly sewing ornaments to a beating anatomical heart. On a small platform stage alongside the video, Kenawy embarks on the process of stitching a white dress on a mannequin that she eventually lights on fire and lets burn to nothing. This creates a glowing spectacle at the end of the performance in the dark room where it takes place. Kenawy intended for these digital and physical wedding motifs to serve as metaphors that symbolize the role of gender and marriage in the Islamic society, as well as the impact that these socio-cultural structures have on the individual. In conceptualizing this artwork, Kenawy drew from her dreams, memories, and lived realities to construct an idea of what defines an individual's truest self. In doing this, she contrasts the goals of her various other artworks that aim to reflect universal human experiences rather than exemplifying her own personal traumas and feelings. The imagery of the beating heart being stitched with ornaments is one of the longest shown during the performance. By contrasting the stagnant accessories being stitched with the moving anatomical heart, the imagery is specifically meant to reflect the rigidity of marriage compared to the mobility of the human being. The title of this performance was intended to further emphasize this concept of interconnectivity as it ties to Kenawy's belief that there is an internal, metaphorical "room" bounding the physical human body that is separate from our surroundings: the external "room". The visuals in this performance were also meant to draw from the ways the human body influences its surroundings as well as how external context shapes the individual; a theme central to several of Kenawy's works including You Will Be Killed (2006) and Booby-Trapped Heaven (2006). This theme is often extrapolated upon by critics and educational professionals who claim that her works reflect the larger patriarchal context that Kenawy operated within in Cairo: implying many of her performances have feminist goals. In her online interview with Gerald Matt, a professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Kenawy clarifies that this piece, along with many of her other works, is not intended to be feminist propaganda. She does however acknowledge the crucial role that gender plays in the majority of her performances and displays and denotes that her work is meant to explore humanity and emotion in all realms, including that of gender inequality. == The Silence of Lambs (2009) ==

The Silence of Lambs (2009) was one of Amal Kenawy's most highly debated works by both scholars and the Egyptian peoples. Commissioned by Townhouse Gallery as part of their "Assume the Position" exhibition (December 13, 2009 to January 17, 2010), the performance took place in the streets of Cairo where several Egyptian men were paid to crawl out of a building, cross a busy intersection during rush hour at Champollion Road and Mahmoud Bassiouny Street, and then continue down Champollion Road. These crawling day labourers represented lambs, while Kenawy stood and guided the group, acting as an urban shepherd. Kenawy intended for the piece to be a spectacle, encroach on public space, and serve as a critique on social injustices, all of which appealed to Nikki Columbus, Townhouse Gallery's manager and curator who was in charge of the "Assume the Position" exhibit. Initially, to acquire performers Kenawy had placed an open-call at the American University of Cairo (AUC) hoping to have students from the fine arts program participate as volunteers. Kenawy told William Wells, the director of Townhouse Gallery, that she had been very transparent with the students who offered to volunteer about the scope of their work, but he later discovered that she had not. Because of this, the students backed out shortly before the performance was scheduled to take place. To accommodate this loss, Kenawy pitched hiring Egyptian day labourers, but Wells denied this request saying the labourers would not fully understand their role in the artwork, leaving them unethically taken advantage of. Kenawy chose to override this denial and hired labourers without informing the gallery. The film captures the adverse reactions Kenawy is met with from bystanders because of her choice in actors, voicing their opinions that the performance was humiliating for these lower-class workers because they were made spectacle to upper-class citizens. == Awards ==

• 1998 UNESCO Grand Prize at the 7th Cairo International Biennial • 1998 The AICA commission (Marseilles Art Studios), France • 2003 Special mention at International Ismailia Festival for Documentary and Short Films, Egypt • 2004 Grant of Pro-Helvetia Swiss Arts Council, Artists residency, Aarau /Switzerland • 2004 The State National Prize for Art, Science, Literature, for using Video as Visual medium, Egypt • 2004 Dakar Biennale award • 2005 The 23rd Alexandria Biennial Golden Prize • 2005 The global crossings prize, Leonardo/ISAST, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, Los Angeles, USA • 2006 Dakar Biennale award • 2010 The 12th Cairo International Biennial grand prize • 2010 The Sharjah International Biennial award == References ==