the street is our gallery

“Compelling Machine n°2” , was realized on the walls of the Swiss Embassy in Cairo (Egypt) in the context of the  project “On identity and fingerprints”.  
The inspiration for this painting comes from the topic of the project: the relation
between fingerprints and identity.
Fingerprints are used to recognize people, to catalogue people, but that in a certain
way they’re the only part of a man that has no contents. Voice, parts of the body,
clothes, color of the skin: these all represent and communicate something from a
genetical, cultural or personal point of view, but fingerprints taken as themselves
have no communication and no contents. They’re just something that each one has
in its own way, that never change, so unique and at the same time so empty (if not
connected with their owners).
In another way we could also say that in this unicity, the fingerprint itself makes
everyone the same from this point of view: there’s no communication in it about the
person, except the fact of being a human.
So, what becomes important of the fingerprint is the fact of being a trace of an
interaction, of being a sign that a man is touching something, building something,
connecting with something and with someone. And so we used fingerprints in an
idea of interaction between persons, where different identities (cultural and personal)
are important in a positive way: for an exchange and for a communication (difference
is not division). We see a system that works with the persons that are behind the
fingerprints and with their cultures, personalities, skills, in a cooperative and
communicative attitude.
——

Curated by Fatma Hendawy, initiated by the Swiss Embassy in Cairo, supported by
Pro-Helvetia Cairo.
Pro-Helvetia Cairo: http://www.prohelvetia.org.eg/1577.0.html?&L=4
Curator’s email: [email protected]
Realized between the 14th and the 20th of october 2014.
The involved artists were: Bustart (CH), NEVERCREW (CH), Mohamed Khaled
(Egypt).

Credits:
Artwork pictures by NEVERCREW
Portrait pictures (13 & 14) by Bustart
“Progress” pictures by Pro Helvetia Cairo

NEVERCREW
(Christian Rebecchi & Pablo Togni)
http://www.nevercrew.com
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