Mamluk Shadows

2023

Presented at Yale CCAM campus in partnership with dear friend, historian, resarcher, educator and collaborator Beshouy Botros. A performance and installation using Islamic lanterns and electronic music to “play in the dark” (Toni Morrison, Whiteness and the Literary Imagination). Tracing aural and visual shadows, we cast Orientalist photo-negatives, while producing a soundscape commemorating ongoing tragedies in Arabic. We also recast the Mamluks, a sultanate of Caucasian warrior slaves who ruled over Egypt, the Hijaz, and greater Palestine from the 13th to 16th centuries. A more celebratory soundscape follows, inviting visitors to move and cast their own shadows.