Marianne Fahmy on Storytelling, Fabulation, and Egypt's Changing Landscapes

Egyptian multimedia artist Marianne Fahmy discusses her practice of reappropriating historical narratives to address contemporary political and social issues. In an interview with Canvas, she explains how her film "31 Silent Encounters" (2016) reworks love letters from 1950s Alexandria to create a nonlinear dialogue reflecting the city's architectural and political decay. Her research focuses on marginalized mid-20th-century histories related to identity and nationalism, using a new historicist approach with letters, diaries, and photo archives. At Sharjah Biennial 15, Fahmy presents two films: "What Things May Come" (2019), which imagines a drowned Nile Delta and a desert society inspired by the Aswan High Dam, and "Magic Carpet Land" (2020), also addressing water projects. The former engages with philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of 'fabulation' to manifest future peoples. Additionally, her work "History as Proposed" (2016) is exhibited at Mucem, featuring a fictional narrative about a destroyed Alexandria railway station inserted into a 1970s magazine, questioning urban infrastructure. At the Middle East Institute (MEI), "Disappearing Land" (2022) maps the Delta onto an ancient Roman map, Forma Urbis Romea, suggesting a fluid timeline. Fahmy describes her work as "boundless by time," where historical reappropriation makes chronology intangible.