Amina Kadous

If My Grandfather Had Written Me A Letter

I stepped into my closet of memories, my father’s family house in Mahalla el Kobra. I had not been there for over 7 years. Time was stored in one place. And, the watch had stopped. I could recall history as, from each corner the tales of its passing, spoke. I saw my life stream by as I moved between the objects and the furniture. Looking at myself in photographs of myself and reflected in my grandparents’ vintage portrait prints, each part of me lived again in each single remnant of the house we were passing on now, to other newer owners. The pieces were not just of the house nor typical objects. They were, rather, pieces of me, pieces my family and I had made and gathered over the years and writings from the past. I was moved by the large and the small each evoking times and places gone and now, transformed in our memories. The collected memories that would shape the foundation of our present and future; memories in the form of prints... piles of papers, dusts of letters, documents, treasure boxes of stamps and photos celebrating an era with all its historical and political references.

Amina Kadous, video of the installation piece ‘If My Grandfather Had Written Me A Letter’, 2018. © Amina Kadous

If My Grandfather Had Written Me A Letter is an exhibition about the beauty of communication through the ephemeral fabrics of time. While digging in the past and traveling through the world of my grandparents, I imagined my grandparents had decided to write me letters, messages from the past. I had gone to celebrate history at my grandfather’s house in Mehalla, instead I found myself celebrating the existence of printed material, treasures of my grandfather, treasures of the past. The textures of time and multiple layers of memories reflected in objects and prints serve as reminders, directing our hearts and recording our lives. The exhibition is my reply to the past, to those people who have gone, taking away with them their stories yet leaving behind lines and clues that retell and remind.

Words by Amina Kadous

About Amina Kadous

Amina Kadous (b. 1991) is a visual artist currently exploring concepts of memory. Born in Cairo, Egypt, she received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from TUFTS University and The School of the Museum of Fine arts in Boston. She has been exploring photograph as an object that holds memories and meanings, keepsakes that give life. Photography as an art has been a medium allowing her to treasure, hold and bless the past she has not lived but only experienced through the stories and eyes of those who have narrated it. The exploration of time serves, for her, as a means for understanding who she is as a person. Kadous participated in the 12th edition of the Bamako Biennale of Photography and was being awarded the Centre Soleil d’Afrique Prize for her project ‘A crack in the Memory of My Memory’. She recently exhibited her photographs as part of The Photography Biennale of the contemporary Arab world at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. Her work has been showcased in London, Boston, Paris, Mali, Italy and the Netherlands.