Marianne Fahmy, Laws of Ruin, 2024
Join us for the final film screening from the From the Land’s Living Pulse series, curated by Angelina Radaković, Mosaic Rooms, London.
You are kindly invited to the screening of three short films by Marianne Fahmy, an artist currently based in Alexandria, on Thursday, 15 January 2026, at 6 p.m., at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova.
The screening will be followed by a talk on zoom with Marianne Fahmy, moderated by Anja Banko, film critic and film programmer at the Slovenian Cinemateque, together with the artist Marianne Fahmy.
Fahmy’s work, ranging from video to installations, revolves around the expression of the concept of fabulation as framed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, but from the artist's radically different political perspective – a commitment to a democratic approach and the layering of images that she uses in constructing her worlds. Looking through her ecological and decolonialist lens, she broaches the question of memory and creates new – alternative, utopian, yet strangely familiar – possible futures of her home place, Alexandria, from forgotten artifacts, archival images, and sound recordings.
The program opens with the short film What May Come (2019), which imagines the consequences of floods predicted due to rising sea levels and the submergence of the Nile Delta in Egypt. The second film, The Land of Miracle Carpets (2020), is based on an Egyptian oceanographer’s diaries from the 1930s, who was torn between a fascination with the West and pride in his Oriental origins. The third film, Laws of Ruins (2024), explores the history of water in a para-fictional paradigm, where water reservoirs are possible symbols of resistance and transformation.
Marianne Fahmy (b. 1992) lives and works in Alexandria, Egypt. Her practice spans diverse mediums, including film and installation. Fahmy earned her BA degree in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Alexandria University, joining the MASS Alexandria Independent Art Program in 2016. Since then, her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including MAXXI, Rome, Italy, Dak'Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2018), the 7th Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama, Japan (2020), Manifesta 13, Marseille, France (2020), Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2023), Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2023), Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean, Marseille (2023), Contemporary Arts Center, Ohio (2023) Art Basel Statement Section, Basel, Switzerland (2024), and the Art Explora Festival, Venice, Italy (2024) to name a few. Her films have been screened at the Kino der Kunst Film Festival (2017), Nurnberg Contemporary Art Museum (2017), and Sharjah Film Festival (2021), among others. In 2021, Fahmy was awarded the Prince Claus Fund Seed Award, and in recent years has received several grants to support her artistic practice.
Anja Banko (1992) is a film critic and educator, currently working as a film programmer for the Slovenian Cinematheque. She co-authors projects such as Slovenian Cinematheque’s international symposium on film criticism and theory Autumn Film School, Ekran's film criticism club Do zadnje besede, is a member of the programming team of the international festival of experimental audiovisual practices V-F-X Ljubljana, and collaborates in organizing the festivals Animateka, Kino Otok, and others.
