Manar Moursi
Returning to Mexico in 2021 for another iteration of the SOMA summer residency, this time in the town of San Rafael in Veracruz, I performed I am not your Mummy in a banana field and a cemetery adjacent to it in the town. At the end of the residency, I presented the video documentation of the performances in a constellation with other works, a draft artist book that spoke of an informal collection of archeological artifacts that a collector from San Rafael has. In this book, I presented photos of these artifacts and wrote a text on the value of objects both in their evocative power on a personal level, but also on a national and political level. In the writing, I wanted to tease and question conventional understandings of national patrimony, considering them in an expanded sense. Who has the right to own an archeological object? And what does this mean?
I was filmed by Harold Vazquez and my friend Rocio Guerrero helped with the translation of some of the texts included in the publication which was presented in Mexico City. Supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.