All Eyes On Her!
The project is led in partnership with curator and UCL researcher Heba Abd El Gawad, Research Associate on the AHRC-funded ‘Mobilising Collections for Institutional Change: Egypt at the Horniman’ project, and Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp, UCL co-investigator on the project.
Heba and the Horniman will be collaborating with groups of Egyptian women who are engaged in acts of everyday activism. These women work to reclaim their position within public spaces. From social media, to streets and their walls, to balconies, washing lines, sports arenas, offices, professional kitchens, art collectives and local street cafes.
All Eyes on Her! will present contemporary Egypt through the voices and experiences of its women today. This will be the starting point for a more people-centred understanding of the archaeological objects from Egypt’s deep past. It will work to challenge a long history of representing Egypt through a European lens.
In 2023 this will begin online, with women-led conversations about the things that matter to them and the Horniman collections.
In autumn 2024 there will be a community collaborative display in the World Gallery.
Hear Johanna and Heba on their podcast ‘Only Collections in the Building‘.
Lead image: Returning the soul to the Egyptian character. A work in progress… Artwork by Hanaa el Degham 2013. Hanaa el Degham is an Egyptian activist, visual artist, and researcher in the history of art and societies and their relation to the present.
