Bank Bannister (Banque Bannister)

Hassan Khan’s sculpture reproduces the handrail outside the downtown Cairo headquarters of Egypt’s Banque Misr, the first bank in the country to have been Egyptian-owned. The original handrail, encountered frequently by the artist on his daily walks through the city, has both architectural resonance in its connotations of hierarchy and socioeconomic implications in its intimate association with a major financial institution. Khan’s recreation of the feature as a sleek sculpture suggests that we regard it not as a Duchampian found object, but as an artifact in its own right. Neither ascending nor descending, the bannister appears instead to float, occupying an ambiguous position between diverse formal, historical, and stylistic poles.