Proxies, with a Life of Their Own

Public Talk with Iman Issa

January 23, 2019 | 8pm

In recent years, the Egyptian landscape witnessed a plethora of unusual monuments. Stuffed animal-like balloons were put up in the center of Tahrir Square to initiate a new and improved Suez Canal. A newly-commissioned statue, showing Queen Nefertiti in the Minya town of Samalout, was so removed from usual depictions as to prompt a public outcry, leading to its eventual removal by the officials who commissioned it. In other places, renovations of historical statues render them, through paint or other means, beyond recognition. In this lecture, Issa will share thoughts on these phenomena, in light of her ongoing interest in the modes of commemoration and forms of address that characterize the current landscape and climate.  

This public talk is part of the Home Workspace Program 2018-19. 

About the artist

Iman Issa (born 1979, Cairo) is an artist based in Cairo and New York. Recent solo and group exhibitions include MoMA, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 21er Haus, Vienna, MACBA, Barcelona, the Perez Museum, Miami, the 12th Sharjah biennial, the 8th Berlin Biennial, MuHKA, Antwerp, Tensta Konsthall, Spånga, New Museum, New York, and KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin. Her book Common Elements was published by the Glasgow Sculpture Studios in 2015 and Thirty-three Stories about Reasonable Characters in Familiar Places was published by the SculptureCenter in 2011. She has been named a 2017 DAAD Artist in Residence and is a recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise (2017), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2015), HNF-MACBA Award (2012), and the Abraaj Group Art Prize (2013). Issa teaches at the Cooper Union School of Art.