عفريت كرلي أو الإضراب القفطي

This art project examines the colonial history of the Royal Ontario museum’s Ancient Egyptian collection using autobiographical accounts of the museum’s founder, Charles Trick Currelly, and covertly scanned 3d models of exhibited objects.

It bases its narrative around two excerpts from Currelly’s 1956 autobiography, in which his archeological expedition in the southern city of Quft was impeded when local labourers were forewarned of its dangers by a decades-old magical prophecy and the vision of an ‘afreet‘, a trickster spirit. Rather than regarding this disruption as a form of ignorance or superstition, this project recasts the historical event as a form of organized labour action, an anti-colonial strike set in motion by the combined efforts of humanity and djinn.

In this interactive painted- and laser-cut artwork, viewers are invited to touch the ornamental brass hand to intervene upon the museum’s exhibited objects so the labourers therein, like those in Currelly’s narrative, can lay down their tools and rest.

Project Documentation