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CONTESTED DESIRES: Constructive Dialogues at museo Egizio
info@museitorino.it
011 44 06 903
From Monday to Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Five international artists are currently in residence at the Museo Egizio.
Nicolas Kyrillou, Maya Louhichi, Dorottya Márton, Patrick Ngabonziza, and Gloria Oyarzabal are engaging with colonial histories in close dialogue with the collection. Through their art, they will explore collective memory and foster a critical and constructive reflection on the past.
The works will be on view from July 18 till July 28.
Additionally, on Friday, July 18 at 7:00 PM, the artists will host a talk in the Museo Egizio’s Conference Hall. Admission is free, but registration is required AT THIS LINK. It will also streamed on Facebook and YouTube.
Site specific projects
Show-Case, by Nicolas Kyrillou (plan 2, room 5)
The title Show-Case plays on the dual function of the museum display: to reveal and to conceal. It refers literally to the physical museum showcase—where objects are framed, isolated, and made visible—but also interrogates the act of “showing” as a curated, controlled gesture. In the context of decolonization and restitution, Show-Case suggests a critical awareness of how narratives are selectively presented, while others remain hidden or withheld. The partial covering with burlap material, paired with absent object moulds, challenges viewers to question what is being “shown,” who is doing the showing, and what remains just beyond view. The title becomes a subtle provocation: Is this a case for display, or a case to be examined?
During the Bronze Age, as noted by Haras Georgiou in Relations between Cyprus and the Near East during the Bronze Age, letters testify to a friendship between the Kingdom of Alashiya and Egypt. Alashiya—Cyprus, my country of origin—represents for me a layered tapestry of time. Its ever-shifting identity through successive occupations has enriched our collective DNA, forming what we refer to in the CDCD programme as a Multicultural Colonial Heritage.
The absence of these ceramics in their original context—now appearing only in moulds—signals both their physical removal from their place of origin and their detachment from local memory. Displayed in a museum showcase within a space dedicated to the Middle Kingdom, they evoke their future as artifacts of the New Kingdom, the period to which they belong.
In my practice, the mould serves as a tool to preserve the memory of an object—and by extension, an entire territory—through time but signifies also the imprint of the border between the interior and the exterior. The friendship between Alashiya and Egypt during the Bronze Age, and the gifting of such ceramics, imbues these cultural objects with emotional significance, particularly for the deceased in whose tombs they were found.
This emotional value, often erased by museum displays, raises important questions around restitution. In this regard, we could – and have to – pose the question: Should these artifacts be returned to rest beside the deceased in Egypt, or should they be used as material testimonies of cross-cultural friendship between two countries, Egypt and Cyprus, particularly in view of the fact that Cyprus found itself always situated within a broader reality of violence, colonization, and occupation, still existing today.
The installation presented in the showcase features a series of drawings that visually narrate the journey of ceramic vessels between two ancient kingdoms, alongside other traded items such as copper ingots and inscribed epigraphs. The vessels are represented through their material absence and depicted in black-and-white illustrations, evoking both presence and loss. Words such as King, Brother, and Cyprus appear in Cypro-Syllabic script, situating the ceramics within their historical and cultural context. These elements suggest the vessels functioned as symbols of intercultural exchange within a geopolitical framework once characterized by alliance and mutual recognition. Now, however, they are displayed in a museum setting, disconnected from their original function and context, emblematic of a lost network of cultural relations.
Rough textile bags, often used in military checkpoints and barriers, symbolize for me the threshold between access and prohibition—especially regarding information and visibility. In the context of decolonization and restitution, I use it to partially cover the museum showcase as a metaphor for obscured histories and institutional control. Paired with moulds that evoke the absence of original objects, the burlap – rough textile – highlights what is hidden or withheld, prompting reflection on loss, ownership, and the ethics of display.
It Was Not the Color - by Maya Louhichi (plan 2, room 4)
It Was Not the Color is a contemplative and experimental work that invites a journey through the landscapes of skin – its textures, contours, and shades. Through close-up shots of bodies with varied tones – black, white, brown – the video questions our relationship to skin, between heritage and contemporary perception. Inspired by the word Kemet, the ancient name of Egypt, the Black Land, referring to the fertility of the soil – the work awakens a forgotten symbolism, where black color evoked strength and life, far from today’s interpretations. In the background, colorism, often invisible, resurfaces. Bodies, once perceived beyond their pigmentation, are now read, interpreted, and sometimes categorized. Wordless and intimate, the film offers a sensory reflection on what the essence of the body reveals beyond the visible.
Born in 1985 to a French mother and a Tunisian father, Maya Louhichi is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in a research-based approach. Through a methodology that blends investigation, inquiry and a sensitive perspective, she explores both personal and collective themes related to memory, heritage, traces and transmission. Trained outside academic institutions, her creative path weaves between the intimate and the political. Since 2018 her work has been deeply imbued with the cinematic legacy of her father, film director Taïeb Louhichi (1948–2018). She is currently completing Mareth, un village parmi tant d'autres, a project that extends this legacy by drawing a parallel between the current mass emigration and that of the 1970s, based on the documentary film Mon village, un village parmi tant d'autres (1972) made by her father. Recipient of the Helping Hands grant from the Tui Care Foundation, this project questions memory, place and absence from the perspective of the country of origin. In 2024, her book Et dans la terre, je me souviens was launched at the Zoème bookshop in Marseille (France). She was also selected for the transnational programme Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues, which examines the legacy of European colonialism in museums and heritage sites. In this context, her research focuses on colourism and its contemporary impact. Her work has been exhibited at the Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography (Mali), Jaou Photo (Tunisia), MUHNAC (Portugal) and the Shubbak Festival (United Kingdom), among others.
Breathing Stela by Patrick Ngabonziza (plan 2, room 5)
Is this any way to treat a 3000-year-old Queen of kings?
I too once was raised in the open among other monuments, much like King Carlo Felice of Sardinia.
Built to withstand the merciless rays in the land of Ra.
All the travellers were transfixed by my colossal stature.
Since my discovery, it became a looming race amongst the travellers, who claimed to be explorers, but indeed conquerors of the Ra, Ra, Ra land.
For those of us who stood once prominent and esteemed, a contest ensued to be unearthed and transferred. And unearthed we were, in numbers.
Some were scrambled in the process, left in ruins, as the Queen of Kings along fragments of all shapes and sizes were gathered, placed and stacked in protective, yet scratchy and prickly straw to be rearranged elsewhere.
The city of Turino, for instance, is delighted to be the first among of the similar kind in Europe and proudly the only one in possession of the greatest and the rarest numbers of monuments outside their natural, ancient land of Ra.
This text is a free interpretation of three historical sources:
· A letter by Jean-François Champollion to King Carlo Felice of Sardinia (1824)
· The poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
· A public statement by Cav. Giulio Cordero di San Quintino, the first director of the newly founded Royal Egyptian Museum of Turin (1824, now the Museo Egizio)
Materials: Natural dyes — charcoal, red clay, indigo, turmeric, walnut crystals — on muslin Technique: Hand-painted Dimensions: 500 × 150 cm
Sound Adaptation Note
A live vocal performance in the installation draws from "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)", originally composed by Astor Piazzolla (music) and written by Barry Reynolds, Grace Jones, and Dennis Wilkey (lyrics). Selected lyrics have been reinterpreted and adapted to reflect and echo themes of displacement, memory traces, and the embodiment of historical presence – for the purpose of reframing the historical narrative, which is central to Breathing Stela.
Strange, I have seen his face before
Seen him hanging around my home
Like a hawk stealing for the prey
Like the night waiting for the day
Strange, he shadows me back home
Footsteps echo on the stones
Rain nights in a foreign land
Parisien men digging for the gold
Tu cherches quoi?
À rencontrer la mort
Tu te prends pour qui?
Toi ausis, tu détestes la vie
Dance in bars and restaurants
Home with anyone who wants
Strange, he is standing there alone
Staring eyes, chill me to the bone
Patrick Ngabonziza, or Ziza, is a UK-based Rwandan artist working across performance and installation. His practice bridges imagination and critical inquiry, using western esoteric concepts to reframe dominant narratives. At Museo Egizio, his research centered on three 19th-century European texts: a letter by Jean-François Champollion to King Carlo Felice (1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias (1818), and a statement by Cav. Giulio Cordero di San Quintino, first director of the Museo Egizio (1824). These writings reveal Europe’s imperial obsession with Ancient Egypt. Ziza engages archival material in the museum as a living source, challenging fixed ideas of power, beauty, and cultural inheritance.
Dorottya Márton (plan 2, room 4)
In many modern societies, death has become a taboo—hidden from everyday life, medicalized, and often avoided in conversation—shaped by secularization, a youth-focused consumer culture, and our psychological need to distance ourselves from mortality. Yet we remain fascinated by historical and global death cultures, such as ancient Egyptian burial practices or Día de los Muertos, which offer symbolic meaning, ritual beauty, and a sense of continuity between life and death. My film explores this paradox through anonymous voice interviews, where people reflect on their understanding of the soul, death, and grief. These intimate testimonies are woven with visual imagery of death cultures on display—contrasting modern silence with ancient expression—to ask how we might reclaim space for death in contemporary life.
Dorottya Márton graduated from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, in documentary film directing. Her work has been screened at FIPADOC, Verzió International Human Rights Film Festival, MakeDox, and Zsigmond Vilmos Film Festival (ZSIFF) among others. Her film, How did I get here? won the student film award in DocsBarcelona in 2025. Her work is on the border between documentary and personal essay film, often using narration, mixed media elements and abstract images. Her themes deal with personal trauma, grief, and female narratives within colonial and patriarchal systems- the two intristically linked to eachother.
DIDASCALÍA by Gloria Oyarzabal (plan 1, room 11 - back Epoca Tarda)
From Ancient Greek διδασκαλία - didaskalía, “instruction”-, from διδάσκαλος -- didáskalos, “teacher”-, was used as the standard term both for the training of the chorus and actors, and to produce a performance at a dramatic festival.
History is built on facts, but facts that are interpreted through the lens of social and political power, as well as personal experience. History is written by the victors, said W. Churchill, highlighting that the perspective and narrative of those in power often dominate historical accounts, leading to an incomplete or biased picture of the past. Napoleon called it a fable agreed upon. So, what happens when, in the course of time, the losers turn the tables and become the victors? Do we get another fable agreed upon? We are now in the post-truth era, where feelings and ideology have superseded facts. And yet, any era has been able to claim their truth as a fact. Even the veracity of a date sometimes depends on your chosen calendar.
Speculation vs. interpretation. Essentially, speculation is about making educated guesses, while interpretation is about understanding.
Jacques Derrida in his essay Mal d'archive (Archive Fever, 1994) addresses otherness as represented through violence, repetition and difference, the death drive and the relationship with otherness in memory and history. How to break with the inertia of the narrative fruit of the Eurocentric colonial heritage transmitted as unique, linear and bounded?
Napoleon's 1798 expedition to Egypt involved over 150 scholars and scientists, 2000 artists and technicians, who compiled their discoveries in a monumental, multi-volume work including text, plates, and maps: “Description de l'Égypte”. The machinery of the Orientalist imaginary was accelerating; the stereotype was being reinforced.
Napoleon chose the bee as his personal emblem to symbolize his reign and dynasty, representing hard work and immortality, resurrection and power, legitimizing his rule and break away from the previous fleur-de-lys symbol of the Bourbons.
In pharaonic Egypt, the bee’s 𓆤 honey and wax were used in various contexts, both daily life and ritual/magical. Mummies were sometimes embalmed in honey, and often sarcophagi were sealed up with beeswax. Jars of honey were left in tombs as offerings the dead, to give them something to eat in the afterlife. It was widely believed in Ancient Egypt that if a witch or a magicians made a beeswax figure of a man and injured or destroyed it, the man himself would suffer or die. In the ceremonial offering known as the Opening of the Mouth, priests used special instruments to place honey into the mouth of a statue of a god or a mummy of a king. Certain lines in ancient rituals indicate that the Egyptians may have even believed that the soul of a man (his "ka", or double; the part which is able to recieve offerings and communication took the form of a bee. Another ritual from the Book of "Am-DTuat", or "the Otherworld", compares the voices of souls to the hum of bees.
The exhibition of mummies, particularly Egyptian mummies, is a topic of ongoing ethical debate. Concerns revolve around the respect for the dead, potential cultural insensitivity, and the impact on descendants. I would argue that in my opinion displaying mummies, especially those of ancient cultures, reinforces racist stereotypes and treats human remains as mere objects.
“The commodification, display, and symbolic manipulation of Egyptian mummies—indeed, of human remains in general—sits at the very heart of ethical tensions in contemporary museology. While mummified bodies have historically been enveloped in a kind of aura of mystique and prestige, the truth remains that these are human beings, with lives, histories, families, and dignity. And yet their display is so often framed within a spectacle of exoticism or historical curiosity, rather than approached with the reverence and critical reflection they deserve. It’s a practice that has been normalized for so long that we sometimes forget to question it. But as artists and researchers, it’s part of our task to trouble that normalization, to bring discomfort where there’s been complacency, and to ask, “What knowledge is being produced here—and for whom?”
Sela Adjei, Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator
“Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums”
Born in 1961 in London, Gloria Oyarzabal lives and works in Madrid. A Fine Arts graduate, she divides her practice between cinema, photography, and teaching. She is co-founder and former programmer of the independent cinema “La Enana Marrón” in Madrid (1999–2009), which was dedicated to promoting auteur, experimental, and alternative films.
She lived in Bamako, Mali, for three years (2009–2012), conducting research on the construction of the idea of Africa, the processes of colonization/decolonization, new tactics of colonialism, and the diversity of African feminist voices.
After completing a Master’s degree in Creation and Development of Photographic Projects at the Blankpaper School of Photography (Madrid, 2014–15), her work has been exhibited at Fotofestiwal Łódź (Poland), Lagos Photo (Nigeria), FORMAT (UK), Getxo Photo (Spain), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), PHotoEspaña (Spain), Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Greece), PHOTO IS\:RAEL (Israel), Bitume Festival Lecce (Italy), Encontros da Imagem Braga (Portugal), Odessa Photo Days (Ukraine), Organ Vida (Croatia), Kaunas Photo (Lithuania)... among others.
Since 1996, she has worked in the film industry as an art director and cinematographer for short films and experimental documentaries.
The residency is part of the project “CONTESTED DESIRES: Constructive Dialogues”, co-funded by the European Union.
Nicolas Kyrillou, Maya Louhichi, Dorottya Márton, Patrick Ngabonziza, and Gloria Oyarzabal are engaging with colonial histories in close dialogue with the collection. Through their art, they will explore collective memory and foster a critical and constructive reflection on the past.
The works will be on view from July 18 till July 28.
Additionally, on Friday, July 18 at 7:00 PM, the artists will host a talk in the Museo Egizio’s Conference Hall. Admission is free, but registration is required AT THIS LINK. It will also streamed on Facebook and YouTube.
Site specific projects
Show-Case, by Nicolas Kyrillou (plan 2, room 5)
The title Show-Case plays on the dual function of the museum display: to reveal and to conceal. It refers literally to the physical museum showcase—where objects are framed, isolated, and made visible—but also interrogates the act of “showing” as a curated, controlled gesture. In the context of decolonization and restitution, Show-Case suggests a critical awareness of how narratives are selectively presented, while others remain hidden or withheld. The partial covering with burlap material, paired with absent object moulds, challenges viewers to question what is being “shown,” who is doing the showing, and what remains just beyond view. The title becomes a subtle provocation: Is this a case for display, or a case to be examined?
During the Bronze Age, as noted by Haras Georgiou in Relations between Cyprus and the Near East during the Bronze Age, letters testify to a friendship between the Kingdom of Alashiya and Egypt. Alashiya—Cyprus, my country of origin—represents for me a layered tapestry of time. Its ever-shifting identity through successive occupations has enriched our collective DNA, forming what we refer to in the CDCD programme as a Multicultural Colonial Heritage.
The absence of these ceramics in their original context—now appearing only in moulds—signals both their physical removal from their place of origin and their detachment from local memory. Displayed in a museum showcase within a space dedicated to the Middle Kingdom, they evoke their future as artifacts of the New Kingdom, the period to which they belong.
In my practice, the mould serves as a tool to preserve the memory of an object—and by extension, an entire territory—through time but signifies also the imprint of the border between the interior and the exterior. The friendship between Alashiya and Egypt during the Bronze Age, and the gifting of such ceramics, imbues these cultural objects with emotional significance, particularly for the deceased in whose tombs they were found.
This emotional value, often erased by museum displays, raises important questions around restitution. In this regard, we could – and have to – pose the question: Should these artifacts be returned to rest beside the deceased in Egypt, or should they be used as material testimonies of cross-cultural friendship between two countries, Egypt and Cyprus, particularly in view of the fact that Cyprus found itself always situated within a broader reality of violence, colonization, and occupation, still existing today.
The installation presented in the showcase features a series of drawings that visually narrate the journey of ceramic vessels between two ancient kingdoms, alongside other traded items such as copper ingots and inscribed epigraphs. The vessels are represented through their material absence and depicted in black-and-white illustrations, evoking both presence and loss. Words such as King, Brother, and Cyprus appear in Cypro-Syllabic script, situating the ceramics within their historical and cultural context. These elements suggest the vessels functioned as symbols of intercultural exchange within a geopolitical framework once characterized by alliance and mutual recognition. Now, however, they are displayed in a museum setting, disconnected from their original function and context, emblematic of a lost network of cultural relations.
Rough textile bags, often used in military checkpoints and barriers, symbolize for me the threshold between access and prohibition—especially regarding information and visibility. In the context of decolonization and restitution, I use it to partially cover the museum showcase as a metaphor for obscured histories and institutional control. Paired with moulds that evoke the absence of original objects, the burlap – rough textile – highlights what is hidden or withheld, prompting reflection on loss, ownership, and the ethics of display.
Nicolas Kyrillou (1998, Nicosia, Cyprus) lives and works between Paris and Nicosia. He graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2021) and the Beaux-Arts de Paris (2023). After high school, he enlisted in the army for his mandatory military service, during which he spent his time observing the Buffer Zone of Nicosia — the area that divides Cyprus in two.
He currently lives and works between Paris and Nicosia. His sculptural and multimedia practice focuses on the division of his country and his birthplace — the last divided capital in the world — and on the memory and materiality of a border.
Drawing from the reading and research of history and archaeology, and through the observation of objects, textures, and urban or military installations that inspire him, he finds the motivation to experiment with various materials and media such as casting, collage, and projection. The notion of layering is fundamental to his working process and to the final outcome of each piece.
His works have been exhibited at the Louvre Museum in the Preclassical Greece Room, at the Paris Beaux-Arts (group exhibitions such as Crush, Mondes Nouveaux, among others), and in other group shows in Paris and Geneva.
It Was Not the Color - by Maya Louhichi (plan 2, room 4)
It Was Not the Color is a contemplative and experimental work that invites a journey through the landscapes of skin – its textures, contours, and shades. Through close-up shots of bodies with varied tones – black, white, brown – the video questions our relationship to skin, between heritage and contemporary perception. Inspired by the word Kemet, the ancient name of Egypt, the Black Land, referring to the fertility of the soil – the work awakens a forgotten symbolism, where black color evoked strength and life, far from today’s interpretations. In the background, colorism, often invisible, resurfaces. Bodies, once perceived beyond their pigmentation, are now read, interpreted, and sometimes categorized. Wordless and intimate, the film offers a sensory reflection on what the essence of the body reveals beyond the visible.
Born in 1985 to a French mother and a Tunisian father, Maya Louhichi is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in a research-based approach. Through a methodology that blends investigation, inquiry and a sensitive perspective, she explores both personal and collective themes related to memory, heritage, traces and transmission. Trained outside academic institutions, her creative path weaves between the intimate and the political. Since 2018 her work has been deeply imbued with the cinematic legacy of her father, film director Taïeb Louhichi (1948–2018). She is currently completing Mareth, un village parmi tant d'autres, a project that extends this legacy by drawing a parallel between the current mass emigration and that of the 1970s, based on the documentary film Mon village, un village parmi tant d'autres (1972) made by her father. Recipient of the Helping Hands grant from the Tui Care Foundation, this project questions memory, place and absence from the perspective of the country of origin. In 2024, her book Et dans la terre, je me souviens was launched at the Zoème bookshop in Marseille (France). She was also selected for the transnational programme Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues, which examines the legacy of European colonialism in museums and heritage sites. In this context, her research focuses on colourism and its contemporary impact. Her work has been exhibited at the Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography (Mali), Jaou Photo (Tunisia), MUHNAC (Portugal) and the Shubbak Festival (United Kingdom), among others.
Breathing Stela by Patrick Ngabonziza (plan 2, room 5)
Is this any way to treat a 3000-year-old Queen of kings?
I too once was raised in the open among other monuments, much like King Carlo Felice of Sardinia.
Built to withstand the merciless rays in the land of Ra.
All the travellers were transfixed by my colossal stature.
Since my discovery, it became a looming race amongst the travellers, who claimed to be explorers, but indeed conquerors of the Ra, Ra, Ra land.
For those of us who stood once prominent and esteemed, a contest ensued to be unearthed and transferred. And unearthed we were, in numbers.
Some were scrambled in the process, left in ruins, as the Queen of Kings along fragments of all shapes and sizes were gathered, placed and stacked in protective, yet scratchy and prickly straw to be rearranged elsewhere.
The city of Turino, for instance, is delighted to be the first among of the similar kind in Europe and proudly the only one in possession of the greatest and the rarest numbers of monuments outside their natural, ancient land of Ra.
This text is a free interpretation of three historical sources:
· A letter by Jean-François Champollion to King Carlo Felice of Sardinia (1824)
· The poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
· A public statement by Cav. Giulio Cordero di San Quintino, the first director of the newly founded Royal Egyptian Museum of Turin (1824, now the Museo Egizio)
Materials: Natural dyes — charcoal, red clay, indigo, turmeric, walnut crystals — on muslin Technique: Hand-painted Dimensions: 500 × 150 cm
Sound Adaptation Note
A live vocal performance in the installation draws from "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)", originally composed by Astor Piazzolla (music) and written by Barry Reynolds, Grace Jones, and Dennis Wilkey (lyrics). Selected lyrics have been reinterpreted and adapted to reflect and echo themes of displacement, memory traces, and the embodiment of historical presence – for the purpose of reframing the historical narrative, which is central to Breathing Stela.
Strange, I have seen his face before
Seen him hanging around my home
Like a hawk stealing for the prey
Like the night waiting for the day
Strange, he shadows me back home
Footsteps echo on the stones
Rain nights in a foreign land
Parisien men digging for the gold
Tu cherches quoi?
À rencontrer la mort
Tu te prends pour qui?
Toi ausis, tu détestes la vie
Dance in bars and restaurants
Home with anyone who wants
Strange, he is standing there alone
Staring eyes, chill me to the bone
Patrick Ngabonziza, or Ziza, is a UK-based Rwandan artist working across performance and installation. His practice bridges imagination and critical inquiry, using western esoteric concepts to reframe dominant narratives. At Museo Egizio, his research centered on three 19th-century European texts: a letter by Jean-François Champollion to King Carlo Felice (1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias (1818), and a statement by Cav. Giulio Cordero di San Quintino, first director of the Museo Egizio (1824). These writings reveal Europe’s imperial obsession with Ancient Egypt. Ziza engages archival material in the museum as a living source, challenging fixed ideas of power, beauty, and cultural inheritance.
Dorottya Márton (plan 2, room 4)
In many modern societies, death has become a taboo—hidden from everyday life, medicalized, and often avoided in conversation—shaped by secularization, a youth-focused consumer culture, and our psychological need to distance ourselves from mortality. Yet we remain fascinated by historical and global death cultures, such as ancient Egyptian burial practices or Día de los Muertos, which offer symbolic meaning, ritual beauty, and a sense of continuity between life and death. My film explores this paradox through anonymous voice interviews, where people reflect on their understanding of the soul, death, and grief. These intimate testimonies are woven with visual imagery of death cultures on display—contrasting modern silence with ancient expression—to ask how we might reclaim space for death in contemporary life.
Dorottya Márton graduated from the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, in documentary film directing. Her work has been screened at FIPADOC, Verzió International Human Rights Film Festival, MakeDox, and Zsigmond Vilmos Film Festival (ZSIFF) among others. Her film, How did I get here? won the student film award in DocsBarcelona in 2025. Her work is on the border between documentary and personal essay film, often using narration, mixed media elements and abstract images. Her themes deal with personal trauma, grief, and female narratives within colonial and patriarchal systems- the two intristically linked to eachother.
DIDASCALÍA by Gloria Oyarzabal (plan 1, room 11 - back Epoca Tarda)
From Ancient Greek διδασκαλία - didaskalía, “instruction”-, from διδάσκαλος -- didáskalos, “teacher”-, was used as the standard term both for the training of the chorus and actors, and to produce a performance at a dramatic festival.
- Caption. From Latin captiō “deception, fraud”; from the past participle of capiō “I take, I seize”. A title or brief explanation in books, newspapers and exhibitions.
- Stage direction (theatre, film). Precise instructions given by the playwright to the actor, explaining everything related to the action or movement of the characters for the correct representation of the scene.
- Didascalia Apostolorum, early Christian legal treatise which belongs to the genre of the Church Orders.
History is built on facts, but facts that are interpreted through the lens of social and political power, as well as personal experience. History is written by the victors, said W. Churchill, highlighting that the perspective and narrative of those in power often dominate historical accounts, leading to an incomplete or biased picture of the past. Napoleon called it a fable agreed upon. So, what happens when, in the course of time, the losers turn the tables and become the victors? Do we get another fable agreed upon? We are now in the post-truth era, where feelings and ideology have superseded facts. And yet, any era has been able to claim their truth as a fact. Even the veracity of a date sometimes depends on your chosen calendar.
Speculation vs. interpretation. Essentially, speculation is about making educated guesses, while interpretation is about understanding.
Jacques Derrida in his essay Mal d'archive (Archive Fever, 1994) addresses otherness as represented through violence, repetition and difference, the death drive and the relationship with otherness in memory and history. How to break with the inertia of the narrative fruit of the Eurocentric colonial heritage transmitted as unique, linear and bounded?
Napoleon's 1798 expedition to Egypt involved over 150 scholars and scientists, 2000 artists and technicians, who compiled their discoveries in a monumental, multi-volume work including text, plates, and maps: “Description de l'Égypte”. The machinery of the Orientalist imaginary was accelerating; the stereotype was being reinforced.
Napoleon chose the bee as his personal emblem to symbolize his reign and dynasty, representing hard work and immortality, resurrection and power, legitimizing his rule and break away from the previous fleur-de-lys symbol of the Bourbons.
In pharaonic Egypt, the bee’s 𓆤 honey and wax were used in various contexts, both daily life and ritual/magical. Mummies were sometimes embalmed in honey, and often sarcophagi were sealed up with beeswax. Jars of honey were left in tombs as offerings the dead, to give them something to eat in the afterlife. It was widely believed in Ancient Egypt that if a witch or a magicians made a beeswax figure of a man and injured or destroyed it, the man himself would suffer or die. In the ceremonial offering known as the Opening of the Mouth, priests used special instruments to place honey into the mouth of a statue of a god or a mummy of a king. Certain lines in ancient rituals indicate that the Egyptians may have even believed that the soul of a man (his "ka", or double; the part which is able to recieve offerings and communication took the form of a bee. Another ritual from the Book of "Am-DTuat", or "the Otherworld", compares the voices of souls to the hum of bees.
The exhibition of mummies, particularly Egyptian mummies, is a topic of ongoing ethical debate. Concerns revolve around the respect for the dead, potential cultural insensitivity, and the impact on descendants. I would argue that in my opinion displaying mummies, especially those of ancient cultures, reinforces racist stereotypes and treats human remains as mere objects.
“The commodification, display, and symbolic manipulation of Egyptian mummies—indeed, of human remains in general—sits at the very heart of ethical tensions in contemporary museology. While mummified bodies have historically been enveloped in a kind of aura of mystique and prestige, the truth remains that these are human beings, with lives, histories, families, and dignity. And yet their display is so often framed within a spectacle of exoticism or historical curiosity, rather than approached with the reverence and critical reflection they deserve. It’s a practice that has been normalized for so long that we sometimes forget to question it. But as artists and researchers, it’s part of our task to trouble that normalization, to bring discomfort where there’s been complacency, and to ask, “What knowledge is being produced here—and for whom?”
Sela Adjei, Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator
“Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums”
Born in 1961 in London, Gloria Oyarzabal lives and works in Madrid. A Fine Arts graduate, she divides her practice between cinema, photography, and teaching. She is co-founder and former programmer of the independent cinema “La Enana Marrón” in Madrid (1999–2009), which was dedicated to promoting auteur, experimental, and alternative films.
She lived in Bamako, Mali, for three years (2009–2012), conducting research on the construction of the idea of Africa, the processes of colonization/decolonization, new tactics of colonialism, and the diversity of African feminist voices.
After completing a Master’s degree in Creation and Development of Photographic Projects at the Blankpaper School of Photography (Madrid, 2014–15), her work has been exhibited at Fotofestiwal Łódź (Poland), Lagos Photo (Nigeria), FORMAT (UK), Getxo Photo (Spain), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), PHotoEspaña (Spain), Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Greece), PHOTO IS\:RAEL (Israel), Bitume Festival Lecce (Italy), Encontros da Imagem Braga (Portugal), Odessa Photo Days (Ukraine), Organ Vida (Croatia), Kaunas Photo (Lithuania)... among others.
Since 1996, she has worked in the film industry as an art director and cinematographer for short films and experimental documentaries.
The residency is part of the project “CONTESTED DESIRES: Constructive Dialogues”, co-funded by the European Union.
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