Tsawwar… Najla Said
Ebb & Flow
“This series is a photographic meditation on departure and memory made during my final months in Egypt before relocating to Berlin in 2021. It spans Fayoum, Hurghada, and Cairo, observed now through the aching clarity of imminent separation. Leaving Cairo, the city I was raised in, transformed the way I saw it. These images emerged from that state of hyper-awareness, of trying to hold onto what was slipping away. Dislocated from time and place, they echo the internal state of liminality, of sitting and leaving, of belonging and departing. The result is a visual diary of moments unspoken — of spaces held in suspension. Threaded throughout is the quiet presence of the women around me, friends, kin, companions, whose intimacy and solidarity formed a subtle architecture of support. Ebb & Flow is a personal archive of ephemeral gestures, a farewell letter to a place and time that no longer exists, except in the layered weight of memory.”
Najla Said (b. 1999, Cairo) is an Egyptian visual artist working with photography, text, video, and food. Having lived in Cairo, Paris, Boston, and Berlin, her work explores identity, femininity, urban transformation, and the interplay between personal and collective memory. Through re-contextualized imagery, her work draws from the everyday, public spaces, bodily autonomy, and the politics of desire, while engaging with archival strategies and participatory elements. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in London, Cape Town, Washington, Paris, Arnhem, and Cairo.
Tsawwar is an ongoing visual series in Daftar which explores the stories behind a photograph, taken in the region or by an Arab photographer, written in their own words.
