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Sidewalk Salon was co-published by Onomatopee, Eindhoven and Kotob Khan, Cairo in 2015. The project was supported by a generous community through an indiegogo campaign, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the British Council in Egypt and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Cairo.
Sidewalk Salon: 1001 Street Chairs in Cairo Cairo, Eindhoven, 2015

Sidewalk Salon: 1001 Street Chairs in Cairo is a project co-authored with David Puig which explores the urban spaces of Cairo and their dynamics through the lens of its overlooked and banal street chairs.These far-from-perfect, well-worn chairs populate the city's sidewalks, offering a unique perspective on Cairo's street life. The project culminated in 2015 with the release of an artist book, co-produced by Onomatopee and Kotob Khan in Cairo, and two video works created in collaboration with filmmakers Aida el Kashef, Salma Amir, and Sarah Amir in 2014. We also exhibited our works in Eindhoven, Gent,  Sainte Colombe en Auxois and in Mexico City.  

The artist book Sidewalk Salon: 1001 Street Chairs in Cairo  combines Polaroid photography and text to showcase the creative practices of design that occur on the sidewalk along with the unplanned interventions in the public space that give Cairo its distinctive character. Acting at times as zoom and as wide- angle lenses, we use the chair as a tool to explore intimate details and collective aspects of the city. If strictly speaking Sidewalk Salon is a photographic documentation of original chairs from the streets, in a larger sense it deals with the material and human dimensions of a layer of Cairo. Out of more than fifty walks realized over 3 years, we highlighted the paths of 3 walks pinning to their location on a map the chairs photographed. Invisible in the images, users of the street chairs are pres-ent through the pages of this volume. Interviews with chair owners give voice to the people that spend time on the sidewalk everyday. Fiction and poetry commissioned to leading Egyptian authors, presents street chairs and their owners from another angle. A long essay uses the prism of street chairs to expand on these reflections and to examine socio-economic, gender, design and political dynamics in relation with the uses of chairs in the public spaces in the city.



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