Exploration and ritual function as entry points for rana elnemr’s investigations into material. The works assembled under the title The Sugarcane Choir rely on attunement, gravity and alignment, extending across the Exhibition’s indoor and outdoor spaces following four elliptical paths.
Printed on fabric and suspended by wires, the tachograph records (2020) spins through all the paths, connecting a series of sculptures, prints, installation and photographs inside the exhibition space. The installation extends outside to the security guard kiosk at the Arsenale’s northernmost point, with four new artworks, including an audio piece. At once tense and playful, veering between openness and protection, the installation manifests an encounter with the nucleus of a labyrinth, the point of convergence for a choir’s live public event during the exhibition’s final week.
Canes and reeds, crafted into traditional wind instruments, carry a distinct sound organised in maqamat, an Arabic term that translates to “levels”, and is commonly used to denote Indigenous melodic modes in Sufism. Sugarcane fields are not unlike the marshes of Venice: a liminal space where the outcast found refuge. The denser the field of canes, the more gaps it holds, and when the wind moves through it, the field comes alive in sound, birthing one material phonic spirit.
—Ahmed Refaat
