When certain people are written out of official narratives, what kind of hierarchies are generated as a result? Can counter-histories re-engage processes of mistranslation?

The Tent as an Image of the Cosmos uses the myths surrounding Egypt’s Library of Alexandria as its starting point, to address significant gaps in the writing of history. Known as the ancient world's single greatest archive of knowledge, the Great Library continues to possess a distinct status and legacy twenty-three centuries after its founding. Yet the most iconic episode of its history is its apocryphal fiery destruction. Not only do we fail in our attempts to account for the knowledge that was lost, but we are also unable to make a definitive claim as to its real mechanism of destruction. No images of Alexandria’s ancient library exist; to reconstruct the image of the library from references and accounts filled with misinformation and contradictions requires the insertion of fantasy and myth. 

This research project by Black Athena Collective continues its investigation of the Mediterranean and Red Sea region to challenge contemporary understandings of an area entangled in colonial logics and to investigate how migration has shaped notions of culture in the region.

Black Athena Collective is a research and artistic laboratory for experimentation that engages political discourse and practices of spatial construction connected to the Red Sea region from Eritrea to Egypt. Through multi-disciplinary perspectives including geography, archaeology and history, Black Athena Collective employs writing, performance-lectures and visual strategies to interrogate histories of the region and initiate new dynamics of history. The Collective was co-founded by Heba Y. Amin (Egypt) and Dawit L. Petros (Eritrea/Canada) in 2015.