Aya Chriki

Does Cairo Become My Cairo?, 2025

This project explores the encounter between an imaginary shaped by Egyptian cinema and the lived experience of Cairo. During my first stay in 2022, a seemingly ordinary remark about my desire to visit a cabaret revealed the gap between the fantasized city of my childhood and its contemporary reality. From that moment emerged a reflection on the images that shape our relationship to places long before we inhabit them.

Between 2022 and 2025, over the course of five stays, I photographed Cairo through fragments of everyday life: urban details, gestures, encounters, and shared moments. Gradually, another city began to appear — more intimate, more ordinary, and more lived-in, far from the orientalist and cinematic representations that had long structured my gaze.

The project progressively shifted toward self-portraiture as an attempt at anchoring and reclaiming space. By photographing myself within the city, sometimes wearing the dancer’s costume associated with my childhood dreams, I question my place within the urban landscape: how do you inhabit a city that was first presented to you as a backdrop? How do you build a sense of belonging when you remain a temporary resident, constantly suspended between presence and departure?

Through these images, photography becomes both a critical tool and a proof of existence. It allows me to question representations, navigate the space between fantasy and reality, and perhaps discover the possibility of a “my Cairo.”

This project was carried out with the assistance of Ibrahim Samir and Rahma Taalab as part of the Halaqat photography residency in Cairo, Egypt, in 2025.