Route 10: Researching alternative ways of understanding urban reality of Cairo
Artworks & visual research: Azza Ezzat
Text & research: Aya Nassar - Ismail Albahar
Sensorial Snapshots - part of "Route. 10" project
In this series of panoramic ink on paper drawings, artist Azza Ezzat explores the primary visual, auditory and olfactory layers of “route 10”, a highway connecting east Cairo to the northeast suburbs of Obour, where the artist’s family lives. The drawings are part of a work-in-progress for a much larger project examining the ways in which the metropolitan city of Cairo is changing and the possible connections and relationships that residents of the city can develop as non-vehicle owners.
As a resident of the city who does not own a private vehicle and has chosen to use alternative means of transportation, Azza was exposed to an alternative multifaceted, multilayered experience of the
highways connecting different parts of Cairo.
The layers reveal a sensorial map that would otherwise be completely lost if navigated otherwise
Sensorial Snapshots, 2021, 7 ink on paper drawings,
various dimensions (average size 70×15cm)
Citrus smell detail 01, pen & ink on paper, 35x50 cm, 2024
Route 10 is a road that is part of the extended road infrastructure that connects the city proper with its new extensions to the East. we would like to unmake the road as a single, unitary slice of asphalt that a map would show and instead sit with a complex sensorial map. We won’t take you on a walk or a drive either. Instead, we experience the road through the artistic practice of one of us, Azza Ezzat.
Barak, On. “ Scraping the surface: the techno-politics of modern streets in turn-of-twentieth-century Alexandria”, Mediterranean Historical Review, 24:2, 187-205, 2009.
Cowen, Deborah. “Infrastructures of Empire and Resistance” Verso blogs. 2017. url: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3067-infrastructures-of-empire-and-resistance
Ezzat, Azza et.al. Route 10 project (2022-2024), research based art project, https://azzaezzat.art/route-10
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