Throughout Women’s History Month, we’re joining the National Museum of Women in the Arts in highlighting and celebrating women who are artists. We’ll introduce female artists throughout Asian art history, as well as those who currently grace our galleries with contemporary works. Use the hashtag #5womenartists to join in.
Overwhelming and vibrant, peppered with fairytale characters and archival images, artist Lara Baladi‘s contemporary vision of Egypt currently greets visitors to the Freer|Sackler. Born in 1969 in Beirut, Baladi is an Egyptian-Lebanese photographer and multimedia artist. Now based in Cairo, she created this digital tapestry—titled Oum el Dounia, Arabic for Mother of the World, a common nickname for Egypt—as part of her interest in the global perception of the country, as well as in the way technology affects visual narratives. The monumental piece, which stands nearly 10 feet tall and more than 29 feet wide, also reflects time she spent near the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt’s western desert: “traveling by jeep with friends, picnicking, and camping beneath the stars.”
“In thinking about how to represent my experience of the desert, I looked to fairytales such as Alice in Wonderland and The Little Mermaid, old picture postcards and my own archive,” Baladi recalled. “The resulting collage is a dreamlike journey, turning the stereotypical image of the desert upside down.”
Baladi’s firsthand experience of the events in Tahrir Square in 2011 marked a significant shift in her artistic practice. During the demonstrations, she began amassing a digital archive of videos, photographs, and articles related to the events in Egypt as well as other major occurrences around the world. This effort became an ongoing art and research project titled Vox Populi, through which she explores how technology can enhance access to materials that document revolution and the stories they tell.
Explore Vox Populi and Oum el Dounia online, and visit us to see Baladi’s work in person.
