photo by Maged Nader



being /walking/ moving in cities


My interest in the right to city began to grow in 2008 when I was arrested, attempting to go to a demonstration in Tahrir square. Goin back to Cairo in 2011 and sleeping in the same square I was once denied simply standing in felt like a revolution in and of itself.
Since 2011led by the changes I witnessed in the use and occupation of public space in Cairo and Damscus, I have been concerned with how bodies move in public spaces, walking, quotidian and non-quotidian urban practices and forms of embodiment involved in being in cities. I have continued to engage in research and practices in relation to movement in space and embodiments of it.


In 2011 I started developing ritual walks Nightwalks in my Pyjamas which are (mostly) solo nocturnal ritual walks in my neighbourhood. In 2016, I walked the same ritual walk with filmmaker Maged Nader who took the photos on the top, and below. 





In 2017, I gave a lecture to to MA Urban Sociology students, as part of the Navigating Urban Life module with Emma Jackson at Goldsmiths College, University of London. The lecture was titled Walking While Woman. The lecture summarizes some of the questions I explored in my research at the time on the idea of body conditioning as a sort of performance training, and how space and hegemony act on our bodies and affect us somatically. 


I wrote an article on walking as part of the process of my research, exploring walking as an act of resistance and reclaiming the city @ Mada Masr, also cited here. I presented my research under the titled Women Walking Cairo in a Lecture presentation as part of RC21 Conference "Rethinking Global Urban Justice" 2017, also mentioned here.

Most recently in 2021, after the performance of Uneven Grounds, I started to visualize more of my research the practice in the form of a performance project. My new project, which I am currently working on to be performed in 2022 is commissioned by Mophradat’s Artists’ Practices Grant.