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“A Guest Without a Host is a Ghost” in Cairo

Selected works of the Kadist Foundation's collection in residence at Cairo's Townhouse Gallery. Image courtesy of Townhouse Gallery. (1)

If something vital is missing, does that absence have a presence of its own? The cleverly titled A Guest Without a Host is a Ghost probes this question in a collaboration between the Kadist Art Foundation and Cairo-based arts initiative Beirut (not to be confused with the Lebanese city of the same name), with partners including Townhouse Gallery and the Contemporary Image Collective. The exhibition presents a selection of thirty works from the San Francisco and Paris-based Kadist collections for a nine-month residency in the Egyptian capital.

Much of the Kadist work is highly conceptual with highlights including an untitled 1992 sculpture by Czech artist Jiri Kovanda that explores the passage of time through empty stacked boxes that once contained photographic film. Also of note is Melvin Moti’s short fictional film, The Prisoner’s Cinema (2008), in which a woman narrates the hallucinations that arise from long periods of sensory deprivation in enclosed dark spaces.

In the art world, a residency is typically awarded to allow an artist to step away from daily life to produce a body of work in an exciting location, but in this case it is the art itself that is being given the chance to breathe new life into the city. The country has an established Museum of Modern Egyptian Art with a strong collection highlighting the best of 20th century Arab art, but it has been temporarily closed. Currently, most collections are either tightly guarded in private homes or have been sent out of the country.

A Guest Without a Host is a Ghost is divided into two distinct phases. Initially, the works have been installed in three separate arts spaces and debuted to the public at openings that took place earlier this month at Beirut, followed by the Contemporary Image Collective and Townhouse Gallery. In the second part of the residency, individual pieces will be temporarily loaned to offices and gathering places such as workshops and seminar classrooms. Local and international artists will also respond to elements of the collection with their own commissioned projects.

Time will tell whether the 9-month residency will inspire some of the country’s private art collectors to let their treasures become more widely visible to an increasingly art-thirsty public.

For more info visit: www.kadist.org/en/

Selected works of the Kadist Art Foundation’s collection in residence at Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery. Image courtesy of Townhouse Gallery.

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