Museum of Disruptions
Part I: Archive of Thrown Objects

 

Museum of Disruptions is an ongoing project that examines acts of disruption in political and public space through the framework of an imagined museum institution. Combining photography, sculpture, and moving image, the project catalogues artefacts linked to moments of interruption, protest, failure, and public confrontation.

The first part of the project, Archive of Thrown Objects, assembles a collection of artefacts associated with historical and contemporary incidents in which politicians were targeted with ordinary objects. Developed through historical records, news reports, and online archives, the project traces a dispersed collection of objects linked to acts of political disruption.

Removed from the moment of impact and detached from the bodies they were directed toward, the objects appear suspended between evidence, relic, and historical artefact, moving between recovery, documentation, and contemporary reconstruction. A staged physics lesson presented on a CRT television, bronze-cast traces of impact, and a hand-coloured photographic print extend the archive toward systems of calculation, bodily residue, and institutional memory.

 

Museum of Disruptions: Archive of Thrown Objects, archival pigment prints, custom blackwood frames, 510 X 93cm, edition 1/5 + 2AP, 2026.

 

 

 

 

Museum of Disruptions: Berlusconi’s Two Broken Teeth and Bandage, bronze and clay, edition 1/3 + 1AP, fabrication by: Brigit Ryan and Ezz Monem, bronze cast by Mal Wood Foundry, 2026.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Museum of Disruptions: Press Conference at the Prime Minister’s Palace, Iraq, 14 December 2008, hand-colored oil on silver gelatin print, custom Blackwood frame, 42.5 X 31 cm (framed), edition 1/3 + 1AP, 2026.
The work revisits the iconic moment of public interruption broadcast on television on 14 December 2008, when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad.
Rather than focusing on the moment of impact, the image turns toward the site of disruption: the room, its decorations, the painting on the wall, and the theatrical arrangement of power around the event. I took a still from the video, reconstructed and removed everyone from the room, rephotographed it using a film camera, prepared a negative, printed it in the darkroom, and hand-coloured the print with photo oil paint.
Suspended between evidence, relic, and reconstruction, the image becomes an empty stage for a gesture that still echoes in political memory.

 

 

 

Museum of Disruptions: Physics Lesson, single-channel video, colour, sound, CRT monitor, 12 minutes, looped. Cast: Dan Hawkins, filming assistance: Brigit Ryan, 2026.
The work takes the form of a staged physics lesson, presented on a CRT television. Its format references the school television lessons that used to be broadcast on national television in Egypt, which I sometimes watched as a student before exams.
The script began from a school physics lesson on projectile motion, but was developed further so that parts of the monologue could also be read through the political context of public disruptions.
The work was also influenced by a students film I was part of during my final year of engineering school, in which a friend mimicked the structure and delivery of those educational broadcasts.
After filming, the footage was re-filmed using my old VHS camera, the same camera that was used in the making of the engineering school film in 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Installation view of Museum of Disruptions, Part I: Archive of Thrown Objects exhibition at Conners Conners gallery.