The Monumental vs. the Imaginary; The construction of the “locale” in the historic cemeteries of Cairo

Overview

This lecture looks at the cemeteries of Cairo in the late medieval period, a time when the Mamluk sultans also competed to build better and higher, but then, the masses remoulded.

It looks at these built-up lived-in cemeteries and argues that as repositories of both the monumental creations of the Mamluks and the fluid haunting imaginations of myth and epiphany of the people, their success lay in how the monumental accommodated the imaginary.

In a competition between the monumental and the imaginary, the imaginary will always win, but if the monumental (the physical shell of magnificent architecture we all aspire to build) were fluid enough to accommodate the imaginary (the rituals, narratives, myths that make 'space' a 'place'), places of transcendence are created.

May Al Ibrashy
2009

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 9