Heba Y. Amin is an Egyptian visual artist, researcher and, currently, a lecturer in the Media and Computing department at the University of Applied Sciences, Berlin (HTW). She received her MFA at the University of Minnesota, USA and is a recent artraker nominee, a DAAD (German Academic Exchange) grant recipient and a Rhizome Commissions grant winner.
She works with various visual media in addition to writing and research. Amin’s work addresses themes related to urbanism, technology and particularly the impact of infrastructure on the human psyche through junctures, glitches and flawed memory. Her work problematizes modes of construction and confronts the narratives embedded in contested territories through the very tools used to construct them.
Her artistic work has been shown worldwide with recent exhibitions at the Berlin Berlinale 9th Forum Expanded Exhibition, the IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, the WRO 15th Media Art Biennale Poland, Zentrum für Kunstprojekt Vienna, the National Gallery of Mongolia, and the Art Museum of Gotland Sweden. She has an extensive repertoire in public speaking at various conferences and events including re:publica12/13/14, Berlin Social Media Week, Laboratory of the Futures in Warsaw, Media Art Histories Conference 2013 in Riga, Hybrid City II: Subtle rEvolutions in Athens, and State of the World Week “censorship” at ECLA Bard Berlin.
The exhibition Say what ?, curated by Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl, gathers a variety of artistic stances around the question of how to relate to the terms of community and belonging in light of the fact that the debates on the conditions of global capitalism affect different countries in different ways.
Even in its most basic form, the question raised by the exhibition title revolves around countless issues of subjecthood and subject positions raised by ideas such as exceptionalism, inclusion, exclusion, participation, and agency of various types. The failure of history, coupled with a fading consciousness of personal interests, leads to representation under the umbrella of internationalism, reinforcing the familiar process that unfolds as a result of flogging the multiculturalist image of belonging to the "...