Rat Diaries

Abstract

Abstract Rat Diaries is a series of drawings that attempts to map the intensity of everyday life in Egypt intertwined with intuitive visual and verbal comments on art practice. The drawings are multi-layered juxtapositions of various forms and contrasting types of lines that move from controlled shapes to seemingly uncontrolled scribbling, from figures to abstract shapes. What this layering achieves is a proposition of form that is ultimately unattainable. With all their pretension to ground the subject within the given coordinates of experiential reality, El-Noshokaty's maps refuse to communicate daily life as objectively mapable. The grid that is supposed to provide a support structure for the map and accommodate the given spatio-temporal coordinates is overcome by an intricacy of lines. These lines cover the grid with a labyrinthine maze and refuse to communicate an experience. But the lines are not as out of control or accidental as they might seem. While reflecting emotional content, they are also critically operational “devices” in a sense that they render the tyranny of the grid and its silent objectivity obsolete. The drawings that are accumulations of traces from experiential reality (emotions, everyday impressions, banal listing of events) crystalize reality in forms that no longer refer back to their original context.