I performed this ritual of embalming and bathing in the hammam known as Malatili or Margush in Cairo, which dates from 1780, and is said to have been established at the time of an Ottoman Wali, Ismail Pasha.The resulting work is a two-channel video from the two sites, which is part of the larger project Two Stones and Heaven is a Fountain in the Garden of your Veins. The second site I chose to perform in, is the site of the recently collapsed Cairene Ottoman bathhouse, Hammam el Tambali. The stone in this channel of the video had an added softness to it. I employed it as a drawing tool to carefully discern the bumps, cracks, and intricate details that compose the walls of the Tambli bathhouse. Stone against stone: the lines it made were intended to soothe and trace.
To read more about this project, check Pauline Shongov’s writing: “Brick, Dust, Matter: The Disappearing Archive and the Mobile Fragment,” Metode (2024), vol. 2 Being, Bathing and Beyond.
Video link
This work was also shown in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2024 at Swimming Pool as part of the group show Ecologies of the Prehod, curated by Off-site - Pauline Shongov, Maya Shopova, and Borislav Angelov.