Mahmoud Khaled. Do You have work tomorrow

Mahmoud Khaled
Do You Have Work Tomorrow?, 2013
Series of 32 screen shots of a staged conversation on an iPhone, transformed into black and zhite photographs developed in a dark room, framed, 18 x 13 cm (each)
Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery, Cairo

Do You Have Work Tomorrow? is a series of 32 screen shots of a staged exchange on the gay male dating app Grindr. As it unfolds, it reveals political undertones, alluding to the backdrop of a city (Cairo) in political turmoil and state of surveillance. The possibility of consummating gay male desire becomes a statement in the exercise of personal and political freedom. The work also explores the particular language, vocabulary and grammar of digital sexual interactions, while placing them within a socio-political context where being gay is still considered taboo and coming out contains inherent dangers. The work is a comment on the cross-overs between private and public life, the emancipatory potential of the digital and, finally, on the nature of virtual encounters that may or may not become real.

Mahmoud Khaled’s 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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