Fragmented Home

by Lamia Moghazy

curated by Anca Sinpalean

What happens when this intimate space is being exposed and displayed in the showcase of a gallery, which, by no coincidence, is a space dealing primarily with architecture, a place dedicated to building houses where we could feel at home? Does this exposure of the intimate really reveal truths about the artist’s identity, or does it hide it more? Could it be possible that it creates more mystery, confirming that we are in fact inaccessible and never totally transparent, not even to ourselves? The intimate, as psychological interiority is, in Lacanian terms, a territory where we escape the gaze of the Other. It is what we sometimes call “at-home”, a place or a state of mind where we feel safe, where there is no need to explain oneself to outsiders. It is a place where we know ourselves best and where we search and constantly redefine our identity. It can take the form of a physical site, like a house, a room, a forest etc, but it can often be interior and subjective, requiring no place in reality. We can feel “at home” in many different ways: in a crowd, in stories, jokes or songs, in the way we wear our cloths or in the routine of saying our name.

We live in a globalized world consumed by the need to see and to be seen. Can art make us question the value and relevance of what is being seen and taken as true “identity”? The artist will leave an ephemeral trace of light and sound in the environment where she spent her last three months, as a visiting artist

Description of the work by the artist : still images , from my room in Alexandria with some sound recordings from Zurich