Marianne Fahmy
∗1992, Alexandria, Egypt
Marianne Fahmy’s work unfolds at the crossroads of history, fiction and mythology. In her most recent video works, she has focused on the history of water in her native Egypt and its relationship to the concept of nationalism. Imagining a potential flooding of the city of Alexandria, where she lives, inWhat Things MayCome(2019), the artist tells the story of a people fleeing the great flood in Egypt to inhabit a secret base in the Sahara desert, prepared to host the new society. Theartist is particularly interested in two landscapes seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum: the desert and the sea, seen as entities still largely unexplored by mankind and therefore bearers of mystery, magic and potential.Atlas(2020), on show at Pontives, is part of a series that questions the history of the control of the sea and the race of the dominant countries for its – impossible – colonisation. The title is named after one of the titans of Greek mythology, but also refers to the largest mountain range in North Africa, the Atlas mountains, which runs through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and serves as a geological boundary between the Mediterranean and theSahara Desert. Cartographers drew imaginary boundaries that distinguished the explored from the unknown, inhabited by monstrous creatures that sailors believed to be real, and which in the sixteenth century were even depicted on maps in the Theatrum orbis terrarum by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius. The film takes on the form of an ancient myth, which – by addressing issues such as maritime migration and the authority of national borders – questions our curiosity about nature and how it has influenced our world.
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