Conceived particularly for the Bunker, El Siddique’s immersive sensorial surroundings options multi-tiered metal structure interspersed with sculptural varieties constructed from water, clay, steel, and oil, all present process entropic transformation. “that which trembles wavers” manifests El Siddique’s ongoing investigation into Egyptian and Nubian fantasy and historical past, notably the transcultural exchanges and embedded energy dynamics, reinterpreted by poetic materiality.

Egyptian tradition fuelled the European creativeness as Nineteenth-century colonial expeditions spurred a frenzy for collectables. Aptly coined Egyptomania, this era spearheaded a mass excavation of archeological treasures, and with it, cultural erasure in favour of the classification and accumulation of objects, which represent Western museum collections to at the present time. Centuries of looting throughout the African continent, marked by a craze for cultural items and a conquering of peoples and their wealth, name for a sluggish look backwards, a must unearth various or forgotten histories, myths, and recollections. El Siddique’s artworks, proof of a fabric dexterity ripe with risk and discovery, purpose to erode the tales and information techniques which can be immortalized into historical past and reveal these which have been left behind.

Previous and current conflate in a sluggish burn of metal, black porcelain, and scented oil. Fractured ceramic urns and hand-cast African masks relaxation on blackened metal mounts, mimicking a kind of treasured show methodology that has come to be related to ethnographic museological reveals. Close by rust work function intricate, oxidizing photos of carved mirrors excavated from Nubia and Egypt, pulled from the artist’s visible repertoire. True to the sensorial alchemy through which El Siddique has turn out to be identified, heat-activated scent chambers launch Sandalwood all through the room, a nod to the artist’s analysis into historical Sudanese perfumery. El Siddique’s work exists within the slippages between private and archival, a reinterpretation of historical past that prioritizes fluidity and alter over rigidity and permanence.

Seated upon a raised metal platform, surrounded by corroding steel scaffolding, is a monumental double-headed snake, an emblem of energy adorning Egyptian and Nubian artifacts alike. Fabricated from bisque-fired porcelain, the enormous serpent degrades and tarnishes in actual time because of the sluggish drip of the overhead irrigation system. Navigating El Siddique’s multilayered set up, viewers are met with sensorial curiosities, as if exploring an enormous mausoleum. But, in contrast to the longevity attributed to monuments and artifacts, carved into stone and conserved in museum vaults, El Siddique’s artworks are ruins in fixed states of turning into. Poignantly unpredictable, her work welcomes transformation and questions the permeability of relics and the colonial legacies they embody.

at Bradley Ertaskiran, Montréal
till April 22, 2023