Corner of a Dream: A Very Real Reflection on Social Upheaval

Running for the rest of this month and up to March 11th, the AUC’s Cultural Centre at Tahrir Square is exhibiting Bahia Shehab’s work inspired by the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. Bahia Shehab, prize winner of the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture and shortlisted for the V&A Jameel Prize 4, is a leading voice in the Middle East by interpreting history to provoke social change especially on issues on women’s rights and preserving Arab identity. 

Famous for coupling graffiti with typography, her latest exhibition, “Corner of a Dream”, has the centripetal theme of Palestinian activist and poet Mahmoud Darwish’s work called “Stand at the Corner of a Dream and Fight”. Through a series of very visual short films, she recalls her previous wall art around the world including Beirut, New York, Marrakech and the Greek Island of Cephalonia. Her work is thought-provoking and pioneering in its message as she explores, remarkably through a new medium for her, the remains left behind in the wake of social upheaval. 

This exhibition is part of an immersive trio that the AUC are showing in their Cultural Centre with the overall theme of Art and Technology and is open for all to come and visit for free! These exhibitions encourage the viewer to question the role of technology in art, how it knocks down walls for visual imagination while also building barriers and obstacles of its own. “Glitch” is a compilation of international artists that explore how our understanding of past, present and future is brought about through medium of technology. The third exhibition “Beit Um Amel” by Um Amel focuses on how technology has already integrated into our lives to such a degree that we are already living an “immersive digital experience”. 

Image courtesy of AUC.