It was this game of bricolage, or collage, as art historians like to call the medium, which I first began to use in my earliest art pieces. This happened around 1991-92, when I was invited to teach two graduate courses on Arab/Islamic history and culture at Harvard University. It was a lonely time for me; I missed Cairo, my family, and most of all, making things with my hands. My social life was very limited for I had few friends, and so I spent a large amount of my spare time in the library, browsing through historical and art books. I went to museums and galleries, where I collected catalogues, brochures and postcards of favorite artists. Six months later, I had to go through a major surgery, a difficult experience; it was like losing part of my body. I was in pain, could not move or do much, and I was bored. A few days later I found myself sitting at my desk, cutting and pasting images from the catalogues and brochures that I have collected over the months. Although I did not recognize it as such, I was playing the game of bricolage. It was great fun to cut and paste images. And unlike historical research that demands a more rigorous methodology, bricolaging gave me more freedom to play, juxtaposing diverse cultural images and historical moments. When I finished what I was doing it looked like a fairly coherent piece. It was an image focused on the mutilated body, the figure of a woman cut in half. This was my first collage, and ever since, the use of collage or bricolage became my favourite medium in doing art.

 Bricolaging may have been also a convenient strategy at the time, for I was not yet confident in my ability to paint, and the ready made image/object gave me the facility to produce my pieces. Given my professional training as a historian, I went to art history and revisited the icons of the ancient world, their mythological world, their gods and goddesses. Luckily, I found art books in large numbers at Harvard's huge library. I used to spend hours browsing and looking at images which I would later photocopy to do my collages. Having access to one of the world's largest libraries allowed me to look at the art of numerous cultures, Africa, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, India, China and Japan, as well as Europe, South and North America. The library also contained a large section on Islamic art and the art of Arabic calligraphy of which I am a great admirer, and which I came to use quite often in my artwork. In the evenings I would sit down and do these collages, and I was making two pieces every week. It was something that was pouring out, but instead of using historical narrative I was using images. There was always an image that struck me, that expressed a strong emotion inside me. Through use of the modern technology of photocopying I was able to make multiple copies of many images from different historical epochs and cultures. This allowed me to develop the technique of repetition in order to intensify the emotional force of the piece that I was making. Once I discovered repetition, I used it also in my textual insertions as well. Image and text were juxtaposed in a repetitive pattern. Choice of text and image involved a reciprocal relationship, for I chose the text that I felt appropriate to the image and vice versa. The texts that I normally chose were verses from my favorite Sufi and Arab poets and authors. Right from the beginning then, textual insertions became an important feature of the work that I did, it was as if I was not satisfied with the image alone. Moreover, the calligraphic process of repetition in my work brings about a state of quietness and stillness to the mind while I was working on the pieces, and the process of making them brought relief from the burdens of the outside world.

 When I returned to Egypt in 1992 I was still on sabbatical, and I had another project to embark on, to build a house in the village of Tunis in the oasis of Fayyum. It was the largest piece of bricolage I constructed. I spent more than two years collecting old doors, windows, staircases and wooden beams, old tiles, stained glass and columns, all retrieved from old Cairene and Fayyumi houses that were demolished by their owners to free the expensive territory they occupied. Building the house involved the cooperation of skilled and semi-skilled workers, but for me it was working with mud brick and mud plastering that gave me the most satisfaction. For one is much freer in using mud brick, one is not afraid to make mistakes, because mud is a malleable medium, and therefore easier to experiment with in the construction of form and space. Meanwhile I continued to do collage for a while until I discovered a new technique from a Spanish friend and artist. This happened in Mallorca while I was staying with some friends. Xavier Puigmarti was experimenting with Styrofoam blocks to carve out whatever image he wanted to carve in order to use it as a stamp. I thought it was a good idea to use this technique, for it could also produce the same effect of repetition but without the photocopying and the cutting and pasting.

 Technique as I came to gradually to discover is about experimenting, you learn more about it as you do it. I enjoy the surprises and freedom that come with experimentation because there are continuous discoveries as more and more techniques are learnt and interlaced. This sense of discovery and free mingling and play is quite fulfilling, for I am not bound by specific or fixed rules, it is like an open ended experimental play. But I also came to realize that making art involves a process of peaceful introspection, the mind quiets down, and one is able to experience both positive and negative emotions with the detachment of the observer. All these feelings somehow came out in the art works: images of stabbing, bodily mutilation, snakes, states of peacefulness or helplessness, etc. There are certain moments when I feel the helplessness of the human being. We are under the illusion that we can control things in our life, and when we cannot, we feel helpless. In doing art, one can get away temporarily from this sense of helplessness because you create your little imagined space of playing, of feeling free and of getting away from the outer world of social constraints that surround us. However, as I have come to realize some years later visual practices do not exist in a social or political vacuum. This is particularly true in places where the cultural heritage plays a significant role in the construction of national identity, and any representation of it in the public space becomes a "political act"….

 Fulfilling an early dream to live in the heart of downtown Cairo, I decided to move in 1997 from my family house in the suburb of Heliopolis to the center of the city. I wanted to be a real Cairene enjoying the city's hustle and bustle, its old suqs, its weekly flea markets, its craft workshops, its antique shops and bookstores, its numerous monuments, its Sufi mulids, its Islamic and Coptic treasure, and its colonial architecture. I also wanted to be part of its cultural and intellectual life: its cafes, galleries, museums, bookstores, and its intellectual hangouts. Despite the dark side – its constant noise, crowdedness, dirt and pollution – my move to downtown Cairo was a step that I have not regretted. Walking through the streets of the city, I got to know it more and more, all its nooks and crannies, even the food and junk stands, the cafes and open cafeterias hidden between its buildings. Compared to Heliopolis, clean, orderly and suburban, there was so much to discover about old Cairo.

 I would like to mention here that my interest in Cairo has also inspired the historical research that I do: the manners and customs of medieval Cairene women; the popular Coptic Nile festivals of the city; state regulatory practices; gender dynamics in medieval Cairo; the contemporary mulid of al-Sayyida 'Aisha, and its hybrid forms of popular piety. In some ways then my artworks may be viewed as translations into visual images of such cultural and historical concerns. This and my daily immersion in the city's life and my fascination with its cultural and everyday happenings inspired the idea behind the exhibition of Found in Cairo.

 It was during the summer of 2001 that the idea of using the medium of the "found object" became a clear choice for me. Through use of found objects I can construct an image of Cairo. It seemed like a great opportunity to engage with the city that I love, to visit my favourite sites, and to practice my favourite hobby for collecting objects. It was like going on a long archaeological search. My first priority was to make regular visits to the city's largest repository of discarded objects, Suq al-Imam situated in Cairo's City of the Dead, where objects are brought from every corner of the city.

 I used the techniques of the bricoleur, interfacing, collaging, juxtaposing, and appropriating images, blurring cultural and historical boundaries. Textual and imagistic repetitions eventually found their way in the various pieces. All the while I was thinking how do I want Cairo to look like? Choosing the found object as my medium, the image that I constructed was a mixture of fantasy and documentation. My imagined city was going to be cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, for the objects I found came from different and distant places of the world. My city was going to be predominantly feminine, for with the exception of two or three found objects, most of the dolls and photographs belonged to women. I feminized the city. After all, the city's Arabic name, al-Qahira, is in the feminine. It was going to be a city of women, but it was not simply about that.

The Found in Cairo exhibit occupied The Townhouse gallery's old premises, the first and second floors of its colonial building. Two perspectives of Cairo were represented: on the first floor there were images that showed everyday scenes of the city; on the second there were images that represent its nocturnal meditative life. Let me begin with representations of the mundane: a painted calendar constructed of a found piece of wood and fragments from an old clock, a reminder of the 9/11 event; a row of headless female doll figures with raised arms stacked in a wooden box, with the English inscription "No to War" written on their chests; a mixed media collage representing women marching in procession while holding hands, as if to say: women of the world unite; whereas their bodies are represented in a singular stylized form, their faces reveal their specific identities: Freida Kahlo, Tahiyya Karyukka, Suad Husni, Marilyn Monroe, as well as my mother and my aunt; a large size painted doll in shamanic colours encased in a large clock box with the Biblical command inscribed on her chest: "Thou Shall Not Kill." The Mona Lisa and Umm Kalthum as feminine icons, occupy a special place among these female representations, for they appear repeatedly in many of the pieces exhibited.

 A series of black and white recycled and painted photos of women were meant to draw attention to the collective obsession with the feminine body, an obsession that is shared by most cultures. To intensify the force of these images, I used the repetitious pattern. These repeated women figures appear in different "feminine" postures, in the veil, in the nude, and with bare legs. In one of theses series, the textual inscriptions hint at the message: "She is taking it off, she is putting it on," suggesting hints at the collective fixation most cultures have about whether women should cover or uncover their bodies.

 Finally, in these imagined everyday representations of the city, a lone male figure appears, a police officer doll with no arms. It is interesting to mention that there were less male dolls found in Cairo's mounds of discarded plastic dolls. Like most of the dolls, it was a Made-in-China or Made-in-Taiwan doll, manufactured in the like of those police officers appearing on American television. I pondered much about using this doll, for it seemed like an anomaly, until one day I found a miniature carriage, representing the Egyptian hantur with all its paraphernalia, an object which may still be seen in the touristy streets of Cairo. The image of an officer sitting on the front seat of an old fashioned carriage seemed to me an appropriate representation of one of the most ubiquitous scenes in the city. Cairenes are always confronted with the presence of huge numbers of policemen monitoring the security of the city. The paradoxical image of a police officer without arms suggests the state of helplessness of these policemen who simply carry the orders of the hidden powers from above.

 As we move from the first to the second floor, from street level to a higher level, a different atmosphere welcomes the visitor. As if to get away from the noise and distracting images and colours of Cairo, and just as many Cairenes do in their nocturnal Sufi gatherings, a large part of the exhibit focused on the meditative. As a bricoleur the challenge here was greater; the question that kept coming to my mind, how is it possible for me to visually convey the intangible state of silence, of meditation, the turning away from the noise and from objects to quietness. Human sized, tattered mannequins in meditative postures welcomed the viewer and helped to set the atmosphere of peacefulness. However, the object that I found most appropriate for recreating such an atmosphere was the wooden shoe mould, which I found in large numbers. Given the harsh nature of the streets of Cairo, Cairenes are known to consume more shoes in the shortest time, hence so many shoe factories in the city. I bought large numbers of these old wooden moulds, but the objects needed to go through a "process of cleansing". These old discarded moulds needed to be washed, and scraped clean first before the paint could be applied. The colour silver seemed more suited than any other colour for the kind of meditative installation I wanted to create and the kind of atmosphere I wanted to convey.