Tourist Handbooks and Guides

Envisioned as a series of tourist guides, this project proposes counter-narratives that invite travellers to explore a retelling of historical events narrated from a non-western perspective.

The first guide titled A Tourist Handbook for Egypt Outside of Egypt (Volume 1: Paris), offers a walking tour in Paris, criticising Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 military campaign in Egypt. The guide contains a series of photographic collages combining photographs of Parisian streets named after famous battles from that conquest with 19th-century paintings depicting them. By interweaving these collages with fragments of Napoleon’s speeches to his soldiers and the Egyptian people, I criticise the historical events that these streets commemorate. The guide also includes a selection of digitally retouched archival illustrations made by the savants who accompanied Napoleon. With these portrayals of Egypt, which were presented as the outcome of an objective scientific expedition, I seek to accentuate the significance of this campaign as a catalyst for a particular, ever-lasting western interest in Egypt.

The second planned guide titled A Tourist Guide for Egypt Outside of Egypt (Volume 2: London), will offer an audio-guided tour through the British Museum in London, criticising the museum’s early acquisition practices. It will include a series of pencil sketches and experimental prints with which I visualise a retelling of how a selection of exhibits were taken from Egypt.