Amina Kadous

If My Grandfather Had Written Me A Letter

I stepped into my closet of memories, my father’s family house in Mahalla el Kobra. I had not been there for over 7 years. Time was stored in one place. And, the watch had stopped. I could recall history as, from each corner the tales of its passing, spoke. I saw my life stream by as I moved between the objects and the furniture. Looking at myself in photographs of myself and reflected in my grandparents’ vintage portrait prints, each part of me lived again in each single remnant of the house we were passing on now, to other newer owners. The pieces were not just of the house nor typical objects. They were, rather, pieces of me, pieces my family and I had made and gathered over the years and writings from the past. I was moved by the large and the small each evoking times and places gone and now, transformed in our memories. The collected memories that would shape the foundation of our present and future; memories in the form of prints... piles of papers, dusts of letters, documents, treasure boxes of stamps and photos celebrating an era with all its historical and political references.

Amina Kadous, video of the installation piece ‘If My Grandfather Had Written Me A Letter’, 2018. © Amina Kadous

If My Grandfather Had Written Me A Letter is an exhibition about the beauty of communication through the ephemeral fabrics of time. While digging in the past and traveling through the world of my grandparents, I imagined my grandparents had decided to write me letters, messages from the past. I had gone to celebrate history at my grandfather’s house in Mehalla, instead I found myself celebrating the existence of printed material, treasures of my grandfather, treasures of the past. The textures of time and multiple layers of memories reflected in objects and prints serve as reminders, directing our hearts and recording our lives. The exhibition is my reply to the past, to those people who have gone, taking away with them their stories yet leaving behind lines and clues that retell and remind.

Words by Amina Kadous

About Amina Kadous

Amina Kadous (b. 1991) is a visual artist from Cairo, Egypt. She holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her work explores memory and identity, reflecting on the fleeting nature of experiences. Kadous sees photography as a way to preserve and connect with the past, delving into her identity as a woman and Egyptian.

Her art has been exhibited internationally, including at the Photography Biennale of the Contemporary Arab World in Paris and the 12th Bamako Biennale of Photography, where she won the Centre Soleil d’Afrique Prize. Kadous’s series “White Gold” has garnered significant recognition. In 2022, she received the Contemporary African Photography Prize and the Prix De La Photo Madame Figaro at the Arles Photography Festival for this series. The project was also nominated for the Prix Pictet and Deutsche Börse Prize in 2023. Kadous’s work has been featured at the AfriKa Museum and Tropen Museum in the Netherlands. She has been awarded grants from the Magnum Foundation and Prince Claus Foundation and was a top ten finalist for the Everyday Projects Grant. In 2023, she received the Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Award.