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Although the term "avant-garde" may be a relic of modernism to some, it is an appropriate descriptive term for an emerging group of Egyptian artists often referred to in their community as "independent artists." Along Nabrawy Street, a small, gritty alley in downtown Cairo, where automobile repairmen fix cars in the middle of the street and a good cup of coffee or tea can be found for one or two Egyptian pounds, resides a fledgling yet important contemporary arts space: the Townhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art. For many independent artists based in Cairo, the Townhouse Gallery, founded in 1998 by William Wells and Yasser Gerab, has been a major venue and resource in establishing an international voice for Cairo-based independent artists as well as providing a space for contemporary artists from other parts of the world to exhibit and produce work. Wells states that Townhouse has offered "artists an opportunity to enter into the 'global' debate that had been denied them by the cronyism that dominated Egyptian representation at home and abroad."1
Even though there have been other galleries that sometimes featured experimental or independent artists before Townhouse, the organization has encountered difficulties. Wells remarked,
We have been working against several obstacles and those obstacles happen to be an official art world that doesn't recognize the work that is being produced by the independent art scene, and that's a huge problem. We can't send our posters [or] our invitations into art colleges. We are not allowed to do that. We are not allowed to post them up onto a lot of public institutions because the work that is being produced tends to question. It tends to raise social issues particularly in terms of how Egypt is represented. Images like this aren't necessarily popular in Egypt.2
Photography, video, and other electronic media works are relatively new for artists living in Egypt. According to Wells,
Back in 1998 when we first opened there was nobody showing photography. We were at that stage. You had Sony Gallery at American University of Cairo, which was for documentary photography. But in terms of artists using photography as a medium, the whole culture discouraged it . . . and you could forget about video.3
For the last ten years, however, lens-based...