Mahmoud Khaled. ΜΚΜΑΕL

Mahmoud Khaled
MKMAEL, 2003-2005
Online research project, installation, book
Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery, Cairo

MKMAEL Stories – an Image Passionate is an installation with books based on a reinterpretation of Egypt’s popular 1970s romance fiction pocket paperbacks “Abeer”. MKMAEL was the nickname the artist used as a login for the instant messaging system from which he communicated and shared conversations with male contacts from the region. The project was an attempt to explore the psychological and sociopolitical aspects of sexual identity construction and reconstruction during online chatting. In this book, the artist fuses facts retrieved from the chat archive with a fictional narrative to create a gay romance story for the digital age. The cover is a take on the original “Abeer” book covers, though the cover illustration does not feature an image of the archetypal heterosexual couple, but a rather dark shadow of lone masculinity via a silhouetted male figure.  The work is a comment on the cross-overs between private and public life, the commercial clichés of popular romance, the emancipatory potential of the digital and, finally, the nature of virtual encounters that may or may not become real.

In his work, Khaled consistently probes social relations, online communities, romantic love and desire. His multidisciplinary practice explores the areas between the personal, the political, the historical and the social, with a special focus on the construction of male identity and queerness in the Arab world. In a world increasingly shaped and experienced through mediated and virtual exchanges, Khaled’s work examines the boundaries between what is real and what is hidden, disguised or staged. The artist probes social relations, online communities, romantic love and desire.

Biography

Mahmoud Khaled lives and works in Cairo. He received his BFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria University and his MFA from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Trondheim. His work spans video, photography, sculpture, installation, sound and text. In 2020 he was awarded the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship Program, Berlin, Germany. Recent exhibitions include: They are Impersonal, yet Habitation is Augmented by the Pressures of Their Indifference, Gypsum Gallery, Cairo (2019), Maskulinitäten, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, and Digitalia, GAMU, Prague (both 2017), A Good Neighbour, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 15th, Istanbul Biennale,  and 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017). Selected books include, Health (Ed, Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz), Documents of Contemporary Arts, MIT Press, Narrative Unfolding – National Art Histories in an Unfinished World (Ed. Martha Langford), McGill-Queen’s University Press, Queer (Ed. David Getsy), Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art, MIT Press.

www.mahmoudkhaled.com

 

 

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