Face the Vitrine
An interactive installation by Ganzeer and Yasmin Elayat - Egypt
2nd D-CAF Festival, Downtown Cairo, Egypt
April 2013
In April, pedestrians on Mahmoud Basiony Street in Downtown Cairo were taken by surprise when they encountered a giant face watching them from an unassuming storefront. As they passed, its eyes followed them in every direction. The face frequently changed over the span of a week; one evening a beautiful young woman would appear; on another, a middle-aged man or the image of iconic Egyptian politician Saad Zaghlou would takeover the shop window. The installation was the creation of street artist and designer Mohamed Fahmy (aka Ganzeer) along with artist and technologist Yasmin Elayat, who sought to create an artistic intervention that would engage the public in considering the relationships and everyday interactions of Egyptians, specifically how closely they watched and judged one another. The results were exciting and at times unexpected.
In this video, Ganzeer and Elayat explain how they came up with the idea of the installation and the steps they took to realize it: from using an open call for featured faces, to illustrating these images on layers that allow them to use Open Source sensors to create the final installation, which triggered a range of reactions from the public.
Face the Vitrine was shown as part of the 2nd Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival, D-CAF