I cannot remember what time of day it was that I was standing outside of Bétonsalon, a center for art and research in Paris. As I write this my memory is straining, trying to reconcile the two cities, Cairo and Paris, that I moved between that summer four years ago. What I do remember was being pensive, standing outside the art space. I was there at the invitation of Kadist Art Foundation to participate in the seminar ‘The Place from Where We Look’, to talk about art and institutions, and the places from where we practice. A few months later I ...

This publication features the works and the research of the twelve artists/groups presented within the exhibition that trace and animate trajectories, nexuses, and mutations of things in resonance with a specific time and place. The artists’ pages have been conceived in discussion with each artist to dig into their practices and processes. When these artists’ practices invoke anthropology, archaeology, or historiography to seek rootedness, they aim less to excavate or clarify the past than to open up new politics of interpretation for building the present. Haunted by different time spans and territories, positions and subjectivities, the artists reveal unexpected intersections, elusive ...