Radical Displacement, 2015 - 2018

Installation views of the group exhibition A School of Schools: Design as Learning at Luma Arles, France (curated by Jan Boelen with Nadine Botha and Vera Sacchetti).

Participating work: Radical Displacement, 2015 - 2018

Installation consists of 4 framed drawings (44 x 30 cm) and 2 x A4 inkjet printed letters and 4 minutes audio story:

Map of the Self, 30 x 44 cm - watercolour and brush pens on paper

Map of the borders between Cairo and Amsterdam, 44 x 30 cm - watercolour and brush pens on paper

Map of African Connections, 44 x 30 cm - watercolour and brush pens on paper

Map of the Major Signs, 44 x 30 cm - watercolour and brush pens on paper

Letter from the IND, 2 x A4 inkjet printed letters

Radical Displacement, 4 minutes audio track

Description: In 2015, while studying at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, Fahmy Shahin received a letter from IND, the Dutch immigration and naturalisation office, in which he was asked to prove his being and whereabouts. This started his quest to understand his reality and his identity. By drawing his own maps, Shahin works through complex notions of identity, migration and place, in order to construct an idea of the world that reflects his own experience. Mapping has become his means to reconcile the actual with the fictional, distance with proximity, and the present with the past.