Cairo Art Scene: Hassan Khan

For too long, the pure creative talent coming out of Egypt's art scene has barely been exposed bar the odd Downtown or Zamalek gallery catering to a niche footfall.

We've teamed up with Cairo Art Blog, a non-profit platform run by art aficionado Yasmine Allam, which supplies the city with a taste of the fine art that is being produced, featuring articles and profiles that 'reflect how the artists themselves view and articulate their work,' for a new online series, Cairo Art Scene.

"Cairo Arts Scene is a new online channel dedicated to showcasing Egypt’s emerging arts scene.  A joint venture between Cairo Scene and Cairo Art Blog, this channel will feature artist interviews, exhibition reviews and studio visits with Egypt’s younger artists, highlighting what is new and interesting on Cairo’s emerging arts scene – a one-stop-shop, you might say, for those interested in getting to know the different artists and curators who are making things happen in Egypt at the moment.

For episode one we visited a man that by all means should need no introduction. Hassan Khan, son of renowned Egyptian director Mohammed Khan, is at first impression a very nice man who wears glasses. Behind those lenses lies a vast plain of extroverted avant-garde thoughts that have lead his multimedia practices to international acclaim with exhibitions around the world including a recent nomination for the coveted Hugo Boss prize. Never bogged down to one medium, he works with image, sound, text, and space, from his first solo exhibition in Egypt as a 17-year-old AUC student - a performance piece where, for two weeks, he was sat talking behind a sound-proofed one-way mirror, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes - to one of his most best known pieces, Jewel, - a darkly lit angler gyrating through the deep ocean on a screen, backdroped by eerie high frequency drones, as two men begin dancing in front of the metamorphosing figure. His practices leave infinite conclusions to the audience making for metaphysical eye-candy.