18 x 12
2023
This piece is a love letter to the women who raised me. I have two uncles and fifteen aunts, all of whom live in Egypt. Naturally, the time I spent there was largely with the women—my aunts and grandmothers—who insisted on teaching me the secrets of life they had discovered. Much of their work took place in the masqat: hanging clothes, sewing, drying mint leaves, or sending baskets of cooking supplies to one another from different floors. It was in this overlooked space that I learned what it meant to care and be cared for. The masqat was essential to their daily rhythms of generosity, yet it remained the least cared-for space. I believe this project is my attempt—subconscious and unintentional at first—to care for the women who cared for everyone else.
The house is drawn from my memory of when I last entered it eight years ago. In this print, the house is drawn in plan, with the walls of the masqat being the only walls poche’d. The furniture in the house is either represented in plan view or axon view, depending on whether it moves. The items in plan view never move from what I remember; those in axon moved— the frequency of which is indicated by the darkening color.