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We are assem hendawi and mostafa elbaroody, we work together through an ongoing artistic and research-driven collaboration that examines how digital technologies shape perception, subjectivity, and the possibilities of future worlds. Our practices intersect across CGI, video, computer-based media, and writing, and we share a fascination with the infrastructures, myths, and manipulations that organise life under planetary computation.
Our collaboration has unfolded through several film and media projects, as well as the co-curation and development of Simiyya, a platform dedicated to experimental worldmaking and critical investigations into technological cultures. Through these projects, we explore the entanglement of digital systems with ecological, historical, and political imaginaries, approaching technology as an active agent that scripts new narratives and reconfigures existing ones.
Drawing on our combined experiences within film festivals, biennials, and research contexts, we approach each project as a field of experimentation where theory, image, and computation converge. Our joint practice grows from an ongoing dialogue that brings our distinct sensibilities into a shared space of inquiry, producing works that interrogate the conditions of the present while opening pathways toward alternative futures.
Exhibition
2025: Return to Earth, Mensch Maschine Group Exhibition, E‑Werk Luckenwalde, Germany
2025: The Geopolitics of Infrastructure, Group Exhibition, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium
2025: Synthetic Summit, Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark
2025: Aurora Digitalis – Parallel Parallel, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Germany
2025: Cairotronica: Cairo International Electronic and New Media Arts Festival – Outnatured, Cairo, Egypt.
2024: When the Sun Goes Down, Galleri CC, Malmö, Sweden
2023: Egypt: Dreams and Nightmares, ArteEast
2023: Farmers of God's Universe, Donaustrasse 84, Neukölln, Berlin, Germany
2023: What Form Do I Take to Be Able to Speak?, Beirut Art Center, Lebanon
2023: Everything Under Heaven, Tank Magazine
2023: HIJRA, London Short Film Festival
2023: SIMIA: Stratagem for Undestining, European Premiere, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Germany
2022/2023: HIJRA, collaboration between RCA MA Architecture & Shasha Movies
2022: NATASCHA-SINGAPORE BIENNALE, SB2022, Seoul, Singapore
2022: ASSIMILATing, Duo exhibition with Dochen Bao, Imaginary Z, Hangzhou, China
2022: Fragments of Assimilated Witness, Selected Writing, Imaginary Z, Hangzhou, China
2021: INFRAHAUNTOLOGIES, Galerie La Box, Bourges, France
2021: INFRAHAUNTOLOGIES, Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, Germany
2020: Dialogical Model, MA Art Space, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
2020: AEROPONIC ACTS 2020: BEND IT!, Graduation Exhibition
2019: Gently Sparkling, MMAG Foundation, Amman, Jordan
2019: BOTANICS X, Dutch Art Institute, Cagliari, Italy
2019: DESYNC 1*, Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, Egypt
2017: FAROCKI NOW, Berlin, Germany
2017: PHOTOCAIRO 6, Cairo, Egypt
2016: MASS Alexandria End of Year Exhibition, Alexandria, Egypt
2016: Something to Generate Form, Kunsthalle Aarhus