Mahmoud Khaled on Encoding Critique in Domestic Spaces

Mahmoud Khaled, an Egyptian artist, delves into the idea of creating perfect private spaces within larger institutional settings to critique politics. His newest exhibition, 'The Beautiful Captive,' at Gypsum Gallery, challenges Egypt's focus on massive infrastructures by using images of empty enclosures from Alexandria's state zoo to represent the illusion of wealth. Khaled often builds domestic scenes, like in his 2022 exhibit 'Fantasies on a Found Phone' at London’s Mosaic Rooms, where he created a fictional home to explore privacy and political issues. His 2017 work for the Istanbul Biennial, inspired by a photo of a detained man, imagined his life in exile. Red velvet curtains in his art reference Magritte and Lynch, symbolizing hidden wealth. He cleverly addresses censorship by embedding criticism, such as disguising a book about the Unknown Crying Man as an architecture text. This interview appears in Canvas 112: Uncovered.