0On Fallen Lands (2025)
A solo show by Esraa Elfeky
10 April - 14 May 2025
On Fallen Lands stems from my long-term research and expeditions in Wadi Degla, a nature reserve on the edges of Cairo. In this body of work, I present a series of sculptures, drawings, and diagrams that explore the interconnectedness of human, geological, and cosmic histories.
While my practice moves across drawing, video, sculpture, sound, and installation, this project began from a place of movement and curiosity. I approached it first as a traveler and explorer, then as an artist. My process started with walking: wandering through mountains and deserts, listening, observing, and letting the land speak. These landscapes, for me, are not just sites of solitude or spiritual introspection—they are living records of time. They carry stories of transformation, of presence, of erasure.
My focus in this exhibition is Wadi Degla, a desert reserve that is slowly being overtaken by the growing city of Cairo. I first visited the area six years ago and came across a simple sign that said this land was once underwater—part of the prehistoric Tethys Sea. But there was no further information. This absence led me into a deep search. With very few maps or accessible documentation about the geological history of the area, I began collaborating with geologist Amr Abouelseoud to learn more about this land’s past. But beyond scientific facts, I felt the need to create an interpretive, emotional archive—one that relies on storytelling, imagination, and artistic excavation.
I believe that everything that will happen in the future has already happened in the past, only under different names, different narratives. To understand where we are now—and where we’re heading—I turn to the past. Not just human history, but the deeper, layered history of the Earth and the cosmos. The land holds knowledge, and in my work, I try to read it.
From found fossils and imagined prehistoric animals, I began crafting sculptures that live between reality and speculation. I created diagrams that reimagine microscopic cross-sections of organisms, rendered in different scales and codes. One of the works in the show, Blue Wadi Resurrection, is a five-meter panoramic drawing that maps a speculative vision of Wadi Degla, compressing its layered history into one visual narrative and imagining its ancient life.
I also drew inspiration from natural history museums—their aesthetics, their methods of display—and reimagined them through my lens. I made interactive vitrines where viewers can slide drawings of hybrid creatures across tracks, like searching through a drawer of forgotten knowledge. These installations invite the viewer to participate in the act of discovery, much like I do on my journeys.
On Fallen Lands is where my lived experience of the landscape meets research, memory, and imagination. It’s a response to the slow violence of environmental collapse, and an attempt to hold onto something that is disappearing. Through these works, I try to reconstruct what has been forgotten, erased, or left unspoken. For me, the land is a living archive—waiting to be read.
Photos by Marc Onsi
