Kaya Behkalam

Behkalam’s project revisits allegoric depictions of European nations embodied by female figures such as Germania, Marianne and Europa. Their symbolic postures are re-enacted by a group of Cairo-based dancers. Through improvisational appropriations they use their bodies as archaeological instruments, tracing the corporeal, conceptual, utopian and violent origins of these imagined communities. They also explore the emancipatory potential of the allegoric depiction itself, which in its ambiguity defies monumental models and narratives of European identity constructions.