Bidoun

Jan 20, 2025 | bidoun.org | Youssef Rakha |Zain Khalid

On July 19, 1962, an Egyptian passenger plane traveling from Hong Kong to Cairo via Bangkok crashed into the Sankamphaeng Mountains in Thailand. All twenty-six people on board United Arab Airlines Flight 869 died, including eight crew members. At Sawt El Umma, The Voice of the Nation, the task of reporting the incident fell to Nimo, the mysterious young belle who had arrived at the radio ministry a little over a year earlier, and who — some insinuated — was having an affair with the boss.

Nov 18, 2024 | bidoun.org | Lina Attalah

If the Egyptian government maintains a list of grudges, Alaa Abdel Fattah and Lina Attalah are likely near the top of it. Longtime friends of each other and Bidoun both, Alaa and Lina have been at the forefront of the opposition movement in Egypt for the better part of two decades — Alaa as an activist and writer, Lina as a journalist and editor.

Oct 14, 2024 | bidoun.org | Yasmin Zaher |Aria Aber

At first, it was contained, it had borders, like the square of the canvas or page. One night , I moved the tables and chairs to the bathroom, and I didn’t think much of it, I thought that at most I was birthing a new cleaning ritual. The week went by like this, and I still did not know why the living room was empty. I was acting on pure instinct. I went to Home Depot and spent a lot of money there. I didn’t know why or on what or how.

Jan 10, 2024 | bidoun.org | Anahid Nersessian |Kaveh Akbar

On a bookshelf in my office sits a small framed drawing of a shape resembling an amoeba, with differently sized dots and squiggles floating within its borders. Along the perimeter are words — “nightingale,” “melancholy,” “Grecian urn” — from the titles of poems by the English Romantic poet John Keats and little arrows pointing from them to the strange cellular forms of this delicate inked figure.

Dec 4, 2023 | bidoun.org | Fatima Al Qadiri |Meriem Bennani |Negar Azimi |Tiffany Malakooti

Friendship inflects and informs much of the artist Meriem Bennani’s work. Many of the actors in the films that comprise her dystopian science fictional film trilogy — Party on the CAPS (2018-19), Guided Tour of a Spill (2021), and Life on the CAPS (2022) — are old friends and family members, or artists whose work she admired from afar and later befriended whilst collaborating.