M.Agha & L.Allais: Nubia Still Exists - online lecture gallery VI PER

In connection with the exhibition High Dam: Modern Pyramid by Aly Younis at the VI PER Gallery, Menna Agha and Lucia Allais will present their research on the impacts of the construction of the High Aswan Dam on the Nubian population and its archaeological heritage. During what is now referred to as the Nubian exodus, around 120,000 Nubians were resettled to distant, newly built settlements in New Nubia in Egypt and New Halfa in Sudan. Although the resettlement of Nubians occurred simultaneously with the relocation of many ancient temples, the most famous of which are the two rock temples from Abu Simbel, it received far less international attention and financial support.

Menna Agha, a third-generation Nubian displaced by the Egyptian government for the construction of the High Aswan Dam in the 1960s, focuses on the trauma of Nubians who lost their homes and land, the subsequent loss of matrilineal structures, and the ways in which all this has affected contemporary issues related to space and gender. Lucia Allais's research focuses on the rescue and protection of monuments from various destructive scenarios of the 20th century, including the UNESCO International Campaign for the Preservation of Nubian Monuments in the 1960s. Although the campaign was framed with the rhetoric of universalism and world heritage, it did not escape the complexities of the Cold War politics at the time.

Schedule:
18:00 Menna Agha
18:30 Lucia Allais
19:00 discussion and audience questions

Menna Agha is a Nubian architect and researcher living in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2019, she served as a visiting assistant professor and graduate fellow in spatial justice at the University of Oregon in the USA. She studied architecture at the University of Antwerp and obtained a master's degree in integrated design with a focus on gender and design from the Technical University of Cologne in Germany. Her research interests include issues of gender, space, territory, and displacement, which are also addressed in her writings, such as "Nubia Still Exists: The Utility of the Nostalgic Space," "Liminal Publics, Marginal Resistance," and "Emotional Capital and Other Ontologies of the Architect."

Lucia Allais is a historian of architecture and design critic based in New York, USA. She is a professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. In the past, she taught architectural history and theory at Princeton University and worked as an architect in both Europe and the United States. She has published a number of articles on the intersections of culture, politics, and technology. Her first book, Designs of Destruction: The Making of International Monuments in the 20th Century (2018), was published by the University of Chicago Press.

The event will take place via the Zoom platform.
Meeting ID: 930 8454 1469
Passcode: 008790