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Grid structures form the starting point for many of Susan Hefuna’s works. Whilst her drawings are initially perceived as abstract forms, her photographs and woodworks explicitly refer to the ornamental architectural element known as the mashrabiya – a decorative wooden lattice placed in front of windows and balconies.
The mashrabiya separates the interior from the exterior, allowing light and air to circulate whilst preventing a view into the room. The photograph ‘Woman behind Mashrabiya’ shows a woman who is only vaguely recognisable through the latticework and the shadows it casts. Her identity remains concealed. The blurring, the black-and-white aesthetic and the subject of the female figure dressed in North African attire are reminiscent of historical photographs of Egypt from the 19th century. With the rise of tourism by Western travellers, these clichéd images of the so-called ‘Orient’ became widely disseminated and continue to shape perceptions of Egyptian culture to this day.
As with the other works by Hefuna, who has lived in both countries as the daughter of German-Egyptian parents, the interpretation of the photograph depends heavily on one’s own cultural background: whilst a woman dressed in loose-fitting robes behind a mashrabiya may seem exotic in Germany, this sight is part of everyday life in Egypt. For Hefuna, the mashrabiya is a projection surface, but also the starting point for exploring her own visual memory.