Abbara Recipient, Megawara, Hosts the Exhibition ‘Between Two Cities’ in Cairo
Megawra, a recipient of Culture Resource’s Abbara grant in 2015, hosted the exhibition, “Between Two Cities”, at Khalifa Community Center in Cairo from 18 to 28 February. The exhibition was curated by the architect and researcher Ahmad Borham in collaboration with Mazg for Comics Production, which was also a recipient of an Abbara grant in 2015.
The exhibition is a new experiment in the techniques of “infinite canvas comics”. The illustrated stories unfold in parallel yet interweave in ways that simulate our daily life experiences in the city. At the same time, the narrative is presented as a spacial installation, allowing visitors to interact more directly and intuitively with the illustrated narratives.
The exhibition is based on Ahmed Borham’s Master’s thesis which explored concepts such as resilience, adaptability and self-organisation in the traditional city. The narratives of the exhibition treated these concepts in imaginative and fanciful ways, inspired by the types of situations we encounter every day and depicting how much we can alter the form and image of the city in which we live by how we interact with these situations.
The narrative scenarios were developed in collaboration with the artists during a month-long workshop and a tour of the city. The team consisted of a group of artists of diverse backgrounds, ranging from comics artists to architects, many of whom were experiencing the art of illustrated narratives for the first time.
