Ibrahim Ahmed

you can’t recognise what you don’t know

Ibrahim Ahmed, Figure #29, from the series you can’t recognise what you don’t know (2020), 35.1 x 25.3 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Tintera Gallery.

The incapability of being vulnerable was, and still is, a consistent theme that comes up in my conversations with other men. At the core of this project is an intimate documentation of an internal process of unravelling “masculinity.” The work becomes an exercise and practice of activating vulnerability as a political act in the face of constricted masculinity. 

In the series, you can’t recognise what you don’t know (2020), I explore my relationship to masculinity and its functionality as a performance. The visual language in this body of work springs off from my previous series, burn what needs to be burned (2016-18), in which I photograph myself in a local photography studio and document a performance that took place in my studio in the neighbourhood of Ard el Lewa. I deploy gestures and postures borrowed from Graeco-Roman & Pharaonic statues, mannequins used to sell men’s clothes, and images of young men archived within local studios, focusing on the defining patterns of body language, through which “power” is activated. By layering, splitting, and hiding body parts, I encourage the viewer to question the normalization of hyper-masculinity. Looking through a highly personal lens, my process involves cutting, deconstructing, reconstructing, and collaging, in an attempt to highlight the long-term effects of upholding rigid and grandiose constructions. The outcome of this is a series of images creating a narrative that conveys visual symbols, reflecting what I view as the complicated and detrimental effects of this so-called “manliness.”

Born in Kuwait (b. 1984), Ibrahim Ahmed spent his childhood between Bahrain and Egypt before moving to the US at the age of thirteen. In 2014, he relocated to Cairo, where he currently lives and works in the informal neighborhood of Ard El Lewa.

Ahmed’s manipulations of materials are informed by research into the histories of peoples and objects. His works in photography, mixed media, sculpture, and installation engage with subjects related to colonization, structures of power, cultural interactions and fluid identity, generating discussions around the idea of self and notions of authenticity within the parameters of the nation state.

Ahmed has shown his work in solo exhibitions at TINTERA, Cairo (2021); Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU Richmond, VA, (2021); Primary, Nottingham (2019); Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome (2018); Gallery Nosco, Marseille (2018); Volta Art Fair, New York (2016); Townhouse Gallery, Cairo (2016); artellewa art space, Giza (2014) and Solo(s) Project House, Newark (2010). His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including TINTERA, Cairo; the Sharjah Art Museum; Dakar Biennial; Havana Biennial; and Biennale Internationale de Casablanca.

In 2020, Ahmed was one of ten artists exhibiting at Photo London Digital to be shortlisted for the Emerging Photographer of the Year Award in partnership with Nikon Northern Europe. His work sits in many private collections and was recently acquired by the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Australia.