Exhibited at Gertrude Glasshouse, 2024.
And He Said: This is Power? explores the complex dynamics of authority, control and emotional expression. The exhibition brings together video installations and photographic works in which the artist investigates manifestations of power in both personal and societal contexts, framed by the interplay between individual identity and nationhood.
I’m a Man, essay by Lisa Radford.
Video documentation of Ezz Monem, And He Said: This is Power?, presented at Gertrude Glasshouse, 2024.
Installation view of Ezz Monem, And He Said: This is Power?, presented at Gertrude Glasshouse, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Christian Capurro.
And He Said: This is Power? Prodigal Son is a two-channel film inspired by the 1978 Egyptian movie Return of the Prodigal Son. The work deconstructs a significant scene where a man returns home after a 12-year disappearance, confronting deep disillusionment and familial expectations. Through repetitive, silent performances, the film reimagines a conversation between father and son about the failed revolution and the decision to leave the country.
And He Said: This is Power?, Do you need to eat wasabi to get emotional?, 2022/2024 35mm slides, Kodak Ektapro slide projector. Production support: Ahmed Lesi and Mahmoud Bakar. Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Christian Capurro.
A photography session in a Cairo bodybuilding gym captures Egyptian men performing traditional bodybuilding poses, then captures their expressions as they taste wasabi for the first time. As their peers watched, a dynamic of peer pressure emerged. Many men tried to hide their reactions during the shoot, revealing their true discomfort only after the camera’s gaze had shifted away. The work explores the tension between the display of power and the urge to hide vulnerability.
And He Said: This is Power?, Golden Eagle, 2024 Two-channel video projection, colour, sound 4 minutes 57 seconds, looped, Sound: Luqman Latif, 16mm film transfer and processing: Ezz Monem, lab: Artist Film Workshop, film scanning: Memory Lab Film. Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Naarm Melbourne. Photo: Christian Capurro.
Golden Eagle is a two-channel video installation presenting a close-up of the republican eagle as it flaps on an Egyptian flag. The eagle has long symbolised power in Egypt, appearing in devotional and political imagery from Ancient Egypt to the present. It also functions as a stamp of legitimacy on official government documents, reinforcing its relationship to state authority.
One channel shows the eagle flapping rapidly, transferred onto 16mm film. In a performative intervention, I used a screw punch, a tool resembling a stamp, to meticulously punch the eagle out of each individual film frame. Repeated continuously for nearly four hours, the process transforms the removal of a symbol of authority into an exhausting and repetitive physical act. The resulting film carries this erasure materially: the eagle disappears frame by frame, leaving a void where the symbol of power once appeared.
Referencing the 1985 Egyptian film The Man Who Sneezed, released in the year of my birth. The film follows a man suffering from chronic sneezing, which becomes a confrontation with mortality as doctors predict his imminent death. This multi-channel video project focuses on sneezing as a moment of involuntary loss of control. I recorded video portraits of men in the fleeting moment of sneezing, capturing these involuntary gestures in high-speed video and presenting them in slow motion. By elongating this brief moment, the work draws attention to the intricate facial reactions and expressions that emerge as the body momentarily escapes conscious control.
The work also draws on historical references, including Edison’s 1894 Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze—the first motion picture to be copyrighted—and Bas Jan Ader’s I’m Too Sad to Tell You (1971). The stretched sound of the sneezes is transmitted through an analog mixer and speaker, creating an immersive sonic presence in the center of the gallery space.
