Here… there… and the question of belonging

This talk is a meditation on my background and practice as an Egyptian woman artist and scholar negotiating an identity between multiple cultural, social and political geographies, which puts forward questions on ‘self’, belonging and responsibility. A reassessment of those questions was triggered by the start of a revolution in Egypt, which I first lived distantly through the mediated image. The initiation of this revolution evoked a redefinition of my relationship to two cities, London and Cairo, in ways that affected my sense of place at the time. This became the subject of my latest devised performance, My City, My Revolution, which is a collaborative multimedia performance that weaves autobiographical, historical and political narratives. In that piece, parallel stories unfold and juxtapose, speaking of ‘home’, the city, longing and belonging, and the melancholic tension of a dual existence, where urban, psychological and cultural geographies are doubled and juxtaposed, where a city becomes the site of displacement and alternative revolutions.