BRAVE NEW WORLD — 2008
Installation and Video
10th Cairo Biennale — Cairo Opera House, Egypt
Inspired by the political and philosophical implications of the “new world order,” Brave New World examines the hidden structures through which authority and global capital reshape human existence. The installation constructs a dystopian environment inhabited by hybrid figures wearing formal black suits topped with animalistic heads, transforming the space into a theatrical system of domination where power appears both civilized and savage simultaneously.
The work investigates the alliance between political authority and capitalist systems within contemporary global structures. Here, the suit functions as a symbol of institutional legitimacy, while the animal head exposes the concealed instincts of violence, greed, and predatory control hidden beneath the polished surface of modern civilization. Human identity dissolves into constructed roles governed by consumption, hierarchy, and economic power.
Arranged in repetitive formations, the figures resemble political assemblies, corporate rituals, or ceremonial gatherings of invisible authority. The installation space becomes a psychological landscape of obedience and surveillance, where the individual body is reduced to a silent participant within mechanisms larger than itself. Presence transforms into performance, while power becomes spectacle.
Video projections intensify this atmosphere of tension and instability, producing a fragmented visual experience oscillating between reality and staged fiction. The work approaches power not as a fixed political structure alone, but as an expanding system penetrating language, behavior, desire, and collective consciousness.
Borrowing its title from Aldous Huxley’s dystopian vision, the installation reflects on a world increasingly shaped by systems of manipulation disguised as progress and order. The “brave new world” emerges not as a futuristic fantasy, but as a contemporary condition in which the boundaries between human and beast, authority and violence, civilization and collapse become increasingly fragile and indistinguishable.
