Artist's Statement

On red nails, palm trees and other icons is a personal archive of images that came together over the course of a year and a half.

Some of the photographs go back over 15 years. Others are found images. Some are set, commissioned or reproduced from newspapers. In the summer of 2007 a young butcher killed two camels in the Guiza Zoo and smuggled the meat over the fence. When questioned by the police he said he did it out of desperation. He wanted to provide for his wife and three children. This incident was the trigger for this project.

• Hala Elkoussy’s project On red nails, palm trees and other icons was commissioned and produced by the 9th Sharjah Biennial (2009) and later the same year exhibited in Disorientation II: the Rise and Fall of Arab Cities, a collaboration between the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Cultural Department of TDIC, Abu Dhabi. In Disorientation II the work was subtitled Al-Archief, Take 2.