Teresa Solar Abboud
Madrid, Spain, 1985
Al Haggara, 2015
HD Video, colour, audio. 37’
Edition 1/3
Acquired 2017

The daughter of a Spanish father and an Egyptian mother, Teresa Solar speaks Arabic, although she cannot read or write it. This circumstance has greatly imbued her work, in which everything is a play with transit, language and its changing translation processes.

To shoot Al Haggara, Teresa Solar travelled to Mokattam, a mountain that somehow exemplifies the intricate cultural layers of a city like Cairo. From a social standpoint, the bottom is occupied by the Copts, a Christian community which has taken over the business of recycling the entire refuse of the metropolis. As the top of the mountain becomes gentrified, real estate developers create residences for an affluent community who lives completely separated from the Copts.

The film centres on the part of Solar’s family who still lives in Cairo, most of whom are elderly people whose descendants have largely emigrated; the in-flux state of the family somehow echoes the one of the mountain.

Palio de Noche (Night Canopy), an adjunct to the film, is a sculpture actually made with the elements of the film set, whose physical presence extends the film into the third dimension.