Raed Yassin
Who Killed the King of Disco. 2010-2011
Installation, video, prints, brochure
Prints reproduced by Sharjah Art Foundation. Brochure commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
About the work
A multi-media installation exploring the conflicting facts and context surrounding the artist’s father’s murder. Consisting of a series of blown-up Polaroid stills from 1970s―era Egyptian movies accompanied by a short looping video that tells a fictional story about the famous Egyptian actor Mahmoud Yassin, and commemorated finally by a publication to be made available to the audience at the showing, the project uses public figures and images to examine a highly personal narrative of loss and violence.
The series of 18 stills are selected in such a way to allow them to be shuffled and displayed in whatever sequence seems appropriate at the time. Taken on their own, the images may seem innocuous, but placed in a sequence, they hint at a narrative of betrayal and mystery, suspense and secrecy. The video re-appropriates the famous Egyptian actor Mahmoud Yassin as the artist’s father, explaining his disappearance from the artist’s life as a decision to move to Egypt and become an actor, thus withdrawing from the artist’s private narrative into the larger, public one. The publication, which includes the Polaroid stills as well as stills from the video in their large, displayed format, allows the audience to then take the material home and use those images to create their own narrative, reshuffling the sequence as many times and in whichever way that they please.
© From the website of Sharjah Art Foundation.
© Photos: Haupt & Binder, Universes in Universe
Part 1 of the photo tour through Sharjah Biennial 10: Plot for a Biennial; 16 March - 16 May 2011. Curators: Suzanne Cotter, Rasha Salti; Associate curator: Haig Aivazian. More than 100 participants.