Anne Du Boistesselin
Research project
Memory of place: Bab El Louk and Marseille.
Project summary
The metamorphosis of Marseille’s Vieux Port district and that of downtown Cairo are already provoking nostalgia among Egyptian families; what about Marseille’s Egyptian émigrés? I want to research the Egyptian families in Marseille who live, work or just happen to be there. I’d like to start by showing them my photos, which serve as a memory aid, and then my paintings of my neighborhood in Cairo. I’m going to record and photograph them as well as soliciting their memories. I’d like these families to describe their old Cairo buildings to me. Then I’d like to draw the buildings and squares in the Marseille neighborhood, and put them up as reflections. I’m interested in the themes of absence and disappearance in the pictorial sense, which weaken both people and architecture.
