SF Camerawork presents EBTI: Ma-kan مكان, a solo exhibition by a multidisciplinary artist, self-taught photographer, and translator living between Cairo and San Francisco at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture (FMCAC).

The exhibition is on view from Tuesday, March 12, 2024 through Saturday, June 22, 2024, Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 6:00 p.m. Celebrate at the gallery on Saturday, June 15, 2024, 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. during an artist picnic and reading with Ebti, friends, and the community.

Ebti and SF Camerawork host a series of open studio visits at the gallery commencing Friday, March 1, 2024, where visitors and SF Camerawork community members have the opportunity to learn about the artist’s work in progress and witness Ebti’s creative practice unfold in real-time. Additional programs and specific open studio dates are to be announced at SFCamerawork.org, and via SF Camerawork’s email list.

Ma-kan مكان means place in Arabic. Taken apart, the word ma-kan can also mean it was and is not. For her exhibition, Ma-kan مكان, Ebti presents a suite of site-responsive, photo-based installation works crafted from prints on fabric, projections, transparencies, and traditional paper prints. Using images, stories, and objects collected from her travels, home life, and the space itself; a narrative of perpetual departure, arrival, home, and homesickness unfolds.

The artist shares:

Ma-kan مكان

A place that is not, a place that was.

Waiting
For you
waiting

We are everywhere

And nowhere

The pieces, coming together
Very slowly

It’s always been there
In the in between

“Ma-kan is a show that takes the window at SF Camerawork as a getaway to personal and faraway histories both in time and space.
An ongoing contemplation on windows.
Windows put us in between worlds, weathers, and thoughts.
A window is an interval of time and it’s the eye of the house.

She is sitting in the window, waiting for everyone to come home.”

About the Artist. Ebti is a multidisciplinary artist, a self-taught photographer and a translator living between Cairo and San Francisco. She has a BA in German studies from Cairo University, Egypt, an MA in translation and intercultural studies from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany and an MFA in Fine Arts from California College of the Arts, San Francisco.

Through the artist’s words:

“Informed by translation, languages, theater, literature, and my family’s making-traditions I never learned, I look at the ideas of illusion and attachment through a multifaceted, dislocated lens.

“My work may be rooted in photography but I am constantly looking for new formats and materials to carry my ideas.

“I’m interested in collapsing time/space in search of home. How can one carve out their own when one is twice removed (in time/space) from it?

“Once I start working on a project, I embrace accident and failure. My practice is ever-evolving, ongoing and is influenced by my restlessness.”

About SF Camerawork. SF Camerawork is a long-standing leader in the San Francisco arts milieu, committed to provoking discovery, experimentation, and exchange through exhibitions and experiences for all who value new ideas in photography. The organization was founded in 1974 by a collective of artists who welcomed experimental photography, unconventional techniques, and sociopolitical themes, and who fostered a range of alternative styles and approaches. The essence of the founders’ vision remains at the core of SF Camerawork even as the organization has adapted to the changing scope of photography and surrounding cultural landscape.

For more than 45 years, SF Camerawork has provided a launching pad for many artists’ careers, supplying invaluable financial support, exhibition space, curation, and patronage. In its early years, SF Camerawork was the first organization in the SF Bay Area to host exhibitions and lectures by controversial but ultimately highly influential artists such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Meiselas, and Joel-Peter Witkin. More recently, the organization has presented the first West Coast exhibitions for artists including John Chiara, Binh Danh, Erica Deeman, Jennifer Karady, Jason Lazurus, Chris McCaw, Wang Ning De, and Meghann Riepenhoff — artists who have emerged as leaders of a new generation gaining international prominence.

Free Admission