Sanabelle Ebrahim

Prof Joan Conolly is a brilliant and prolific anthropologist. She epitomises, for me, an extract I stumbled upon whilst reading the book, CREATIVE RECKONINGS: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt by Jessica Winegar. ‘Explaining her growing interest in experimenting with used objects, she said, “at that time I was interested in things [ashya’], almost in a spiritual way ... I was trying to see the outside world from a place deep inside myself.” As she sat with herself, she also sat with “simple things” and tried to “see them as if they were the whole world.” She explained that she was interested in “silly things, like [pointing to a piece of brick on the table] this thing in front of us”–details in everyday life that people might not pay attention to. She tried to highlight them in her work, because she felt that one needed to see these details in order to see the person beside oneself, and indeed to see oneself more fully. In this period, she read profusely. She explained, “I always take theories and philosophies and apply them in a very special way that benefits me. It’s like they enter into an internal mill [mathana dakhiliyya].”’  (pp 89)

Here’s to constellations of green butterfly rainbow-filled days, green with glory.

Love and best wishes,

Sanabelle Ebrahim

Director, Indians in Africa

29 Aug. 11