On Fallen Lands – A solo show by Esraa Elfeky

10 April – 14 May 2025

Gypsum is pleased to present On Fallen Lands, the first solo exhibition at the gallery by Egyptian artist Esraa Elfeky. Departing from her research and expeditions in Wadi Degla, a nature reserve on the outskirts of Cairo, Elfeky presents a series of sculptures, drawings, and diagrams that explores the interconnectedness of human, geological, and cosmic histories.

Elfeky's multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, video, sculpture, sound, and installation, but for this body of work, she describes herself "first as a traveler and explorer, then as an artist." Unearthing the interrelations between the natural world, urban spaces, and time, she began this series through extensive excursions, wandering through mountainous and desert landscapes. Beyond being sites of solitude and spiritual introspection, these landscapes serve as repositories of history in Elfeky’s work, bearing traces of human presence and geological transformation.

Central to the work in On Fallen Lands is Elfeky’s research in Wadi Degla National Reserve, a desert slowly getting swallowed by the urban sprawl of Cairo. On one of her trips to the nature reserve five years ago, she encountered signage that said that the desert used to be a body of water (once a part of the prehistoric Tethys Sea), but it revealed no further details. With the lack of maps, geological information, and accessible documentation on the history of Wadi Degla, Elfeky collaborated with geologist Amr Abouelseoud to learn more about the land’s history. But beyond scientific research, her work seeks to create an interpretive archive for these disappearing systems shaped by visual storytelling and artistic exploration.

For Elfeky, "Everything that will happen in the future has already happened in the past, only with different narratives. To truly understand our present and anticipate the future, we must look to the past—not just human history, but the history of the cosmos itself. That’s why I am drawn to exploring history and discovering who we are through the land." Consulting environments, such as that of Wadi Degla, Elfeky uses these landscapes as vehicles for storytelling. Elfeky produces imaginative sculptures inspired by found fossils and prehistoric animals. Diagrams envision microscopic cross-sections of a range of organisms–drawn with a selection of scales, close-ups and colour coding. The monumental five-meter panoramic drawing in the exhibition, Blue Wadi Resurrection, produces both a speculative map of Wadi Degla while compressing its history and imagining its prehistoric life. 

Elfeky also draws from the aesthetics of natural history museums, appropriating their methods of display to explore how to present histories of extinction. She displays her taxonomic drawings of hybrid creatures in interactive vitrines that recall museum displays. Similarly to how Elfeky unveils the histories and metamorphosis of these organisms on her excursions, viewers are invited to slide the drawings across the vitrine’s tracks and partake in the process of discovery.

Merging scientific research with personal exploration, On Fallen Lands intertwines Elfeky's embodied experiences of nature with her artistic practice. By navigating the slow processes of environmental collapse, Elfeky’s work becomes a speculative record—preserving moments in time and reconstructing histories that have long been forgotten. As she describes, “This is when the land itself becomes a record of history, waiting to be read.”

Esraa Elfeky (b. 1989) is an Egyptian multimedia artist working with video, sculpture, drawing, sound, and installation. Her work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as W139/Netherlands, Biennale Gherdeina/Italy, Kunstverein Hamburg/ Germany, Tabari artspace/UAE, GABES CINEMA FEN festival/Tunisia, Mena Film festival/Canada, MMAG Foundation/Jordan, Townhouse Gallery/Egypt. Elfeky is the recipient of awards such as Pro Helvetia, a special mention award of the GABES CINEMA Festival, Gypsum Bursaries, the Warehouse421 production grant, the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts grant in Salzburg 2020, and the 25th Youth Salon Prize for Installation Art at Cairo’s Opera House.