International Visitors Programme
From
Egypt
Dates of visit
9 to 13 January 2018
Purpose of visit
Mohamed Elshahed will meet with Tamar Shafrir (writer and researcher in the extended fields of design, visual culture and technology), Nick Axel (architect, theorist and editor based in Amsterdam, now deputy Editor of e-flux architecture) and Füsun Türetken (architect and visual artist from Istanbul, former Research Fellow at Het Nieuwe Instituut and lecturer in Visual Culture, Interior and Audio Visual Design).
He will then meet with Fadwa Naamna (2018 curatorial fellow at De Appel) and have dinner with Michiel van Iersel (an urbanist and curator working at the intersection of the arts, architecture, design and heritage). He will also visit Mitchell Esajas at The Black Archives, the historical archive for conversations, activities and literature from Black and other perspectives that are often overlooked elsewhere. Part of Mohameds' programme also comprises visits to the new exhibition design for the permanent collection by OMA in Stedelijk BASE, the exhibition Black and Revolutionary: The story of Hermina and Otto Huiswoud (on two black revolutionaries), and the Change the System exhibition at Boijmans van Beuningen where he will meet with Annemartine van Kesteren, the curator of Change the System.
Elshahed will join Thursday Night Lecture _Design Dialogues: Based in&_ at Het Nieuwe Instituut as a panellist for this Design Dialogue that will look critically at the role of locality in the context of design. Throughout his visit, there will be possibilities of network enhancement and consolidation in the Dutch field of architecture and design, which will open up opportunities for further collaboration.
Bio
Mohamed Elshahed is a Cairo-based architect, independent researcher and writer. He is the curator of the British Museum's Modern Egypt Project and teaches architecture history at the American University in Cairo. In 2011, he founded the online platform 'Cairo Observer' as a focal point of architectural and urban discourse in Egypt. Elshahed is currently preparing the manuscript for his book Revolutionary Modernism? Architecture and the Politics of Transition in Egypt, 1936-1967, which focuses on architecture and urban planning in Egypt during the period of political transition around the 1952 coup d'état. He holds a Master's degree in Architecture Studies from MIT.