A Downtown Street

2002

In keeping with his strong engagement with the lives of the urban working

class in the back lanes of Cairo, Ayman Ramadan has engaged the com-munity of workers at every level for this project. Initially identifying the

various activities that take place in the lane, whether formal or informal,

permanent or transient, Ramadan then collapses the individuals and

occupation into two-dimensional figures that represent the street in motion.

Abandoned cars from neighboring streets were brought into Townhouse

Gallery’s Factory Space and welders and mechanics offered machines and tools to authenticate the space. The personalized metal images adopted

the characteristics of both the work undertaken and the personality of the worker. Local coffee shops set up inside the space and as with all the individuals represented took part in the positioning of their cutouts.

Welders, mechanics, car seat repairmen, street children, newspaper sellers, shoeshine boys, men and women who pass thru the lane and small sand-wich vendors all occupy the Factory Space as simplified metal shapes.

Ramadan garnishes substantial support from the street to the extent that

on the opening night, real life and illusion fused together as people collected round the symbols of themselves, offering the services that the figures so

powerfully represented.

Ramadan had his figures produced within the lane itself and the crude battered metal sculptures tellingly revealed under the guise of humor,

their awareness of class and occupational discrimination that dominates

their lives on a daily basis.