My name is Kristen. I have recently returned from a year long stay in Cairo, Egypt. While living in Cairo, I was carrying out anthropological research for my recently completed master's thesis and working hard to understand the ins and outs of different social spaces. By contributing to this campaign, you will help me to create a photo exhibition and events that will facilitate a space for learning, art, discussion, and awareness related to Cairo and drawn from my experiences doing fieldwork.
Cairo has offered me a new sense of place and inspiration to attend to the relationships easily absorbed in the mass of urban life. These photographs and the stories that accompany them, illustrate the difficult to define relationships that Egyptians have to the streets, each other, and the rest of the world. They also illustrate my experience and the lens through which I was seeing and understanding all that was happening around me.
Each photo will be accompanied by a story that will help to produce a visual anthropology and an opportunity to learn. Not only will this project build an artistic space around my experiences and visual imagery of Cairo's current situation, it would also give me the opportunity to host events involving lectures, fundraisers, and storytelling.
Currently, there are multiple spaces interested in hosting the project! Chicago and Normal, Illinois and Geneva, Switzerland are a few.
What I Need to Make it Happen:
I'd love for you to help me make this happen. Unfortunately, printing and framing photos is not cheap. Neither is creating or using an exhibition space or hosting an event. For example, to use a gallery space in Chicago for one month, the cost is 1,200 US dollars! To professionally print and frame one large photo costs between 50-100 US dollars. With the money that is raised, I will print and frame a selection of photographs that I took and that I feel best represents some of the current social issues, cultural spaces, and local experiences, unique to my time working with a community of Egyptians who live under harsh and unjust conditions.
Major costs include: the use of a gallery space, event space and time, printing of photos, framing photos, and transportation.
As a result of your support for the exhibition, your contribution would also play a role in a greater project. All of the profits raised from the exhibition will go towards a project or the support of an existing organization in Egypt. By contributing to this event, you will also be contributing to a greater opportunity support Egyptians from the communities where these photographs are drawn from.
The Impact
Art serves as a way to teach and inspire - the impact of this project would be just that. This exhibition would give people the opportunity to understand a place in the world that is seldom talked about and often misunderstood. Perhaps now more than ever, it is important for us to create spaces that tell a human story and that foster a sense of empathy.
Other Ways You Can Help
It's understandable that making a monetary contribution isn't always easy. If you're not able to, no worries. Perhaps you can help in other ways! Please, spread the word. Post this campaign on your social media site and ask others to make a contribution.
If you know of any space that would be willing to host this project as an exhibition and event, please get in touch!
Since this project is about much more than my photos and the stories I have to accompany them (it's about experiential learning, an understanding of people and the world, growing a sense of empathy and compassion, having a sense of wonder, appreciating art and culture, and building a sense of global citizenship), I ask that you take some time to learn about the current situation in Egypt, the events that have unfolded since the 2011 revolution, the people, the culture, the challenges and the beauty of living in a space like Cairo.
