Baladi Bus / Coffee Shop

2004

Both Baladi Bus and Coffee Shop were originally shown at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo as part of Ayman Ramadan’s 2004 solo exhibition entitled Baladi. The installation Baladi Bus has also been exhibited in Germany at the Kunstmuseum Bonn as part of the 2007 show The Present out of the Past Millennia – Contemporary Art from Egypt.

In the installation Baladi Bus (baladi literally means ’common’, but often

carries the pejorative sense of ‘coarse’ or even ‘backward’), Ramadan’s

metal sculptures are seated in a replica of a Cairo minibus. The passengers

within are doomed to the fate of a never ending journey through the sha’abi

(meaning ’popular’ in the sense of related to the ordinary people) areas of

Cairo. A video projected in front of them and depicting their view of the city

represents the windshield of this typical Cairene means of transportation:

dilapidated, overcrowded and inefficient.

The video incorporates the colors and goings-on of ordinary Cairo streets,

and its soundtrack includes sha’abi music, the all-pervading background

noise of the city’s incessant traffic and conversations between the world-weary passengers on the bus. It is designed to give the viewer a taste of

life in the working class districts of Cairo, which the average tourist will never experience and which in the view of many are best swept under

the proverbial carpet. The looped film is not only a nod to the tedium of

gridlocked Cairo traffic, but is also a powerful reminder of the monotony

of daily life for the city’s all-too-often overlooked working classes.

The installation Coffee Shop portrays a standard urban lunch bar. Among

the most subtle of Ramadan’s installations, the viewer is presented with

a colorful replica of a Cairene sandwich restaurant accompanied by metal

figurine customers. Again, a video (this time viewed on a television set)

highlights aspects of ordinary life that often go unnoticed. Instead of airing

the usual television transmission, viewers find themselves watching footage

of real sandwich stand customers. This picture within a picture helps the

viewer to grasp the fact that, too often, for the people who go about their

daily lives carrying out ordinary tasks, it is difficult to recognize the social

and cultural significance of their seemingly mundane actions. It is the

ordinary people who create and nurture traditions, even if it is just that

of eating a sandwich for lunch. The video in this installation is both a reminder of the importance of the contributions of ordinary people to Egyptian society and culture and a reference to the irony of needing

such a reminder.