Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man

In 2001, an incident occurred in Egypt in which fifty men aboard the Queen Boat, a gay disco floating on the Nile, were arrested. The men were apprehended by the authorities, tortured and subjected to media exposure that would entail significant reputational damage. While in the courtroom, the accused men covered their faces with white fabric to protect their identities. In one press photograph, a man with his face only partially covered is seen crying. This powerful image has become iconic within the Egyptian gay community as an expression of forced exposure, suffering and concealment as homosexuals continue to be persecuted.

Khaled’s Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man (2017) is grounded in this historical event, but fictionalises the biographical details of a particular individual who represents the stigmatised groups in places such as the artist’s native Egypt. The home-museum of this erudite and cultivated unknown man contains paintings, sculptures, objects, photographs, as well as his personal belongings. The work is located in the ARK Kültür, a modernist villa in Cihangir, close to Istanbul Modern and Galata Greek School, as well as Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, also a fictional museum. The ARK Kültür is the former home of an antiques dealer – who was himself homosexual – and who is one point of reference for Khaled’s crying man.

The fictional museum also includes an audio tour narrated from the perspective of a neighbour: an individual who has partially observed, with intimacy as well as distance, the goings-on of the unknown man’s private life. While documenting a specific biography, history and identity, the work concerns itself with larger questions, such as the dialectics of exposure and concealment; the entanglement of neighbourhood, vigilance and testament; the interrelations of public and private spheres; as well as the complex history of gays in the Middle East and Africa and the persecution they continue to experience.