ABSTRACT
This chapter will read the work of Huda Lutfi, one of Egypt’s leading avantgarde artists, focusing specifically on her widely reviewed and controversial exhibit Found in Cairo (Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, May 2003) as a way to enter the field of contemporary visual practices in Egypt and to explore the cultural politics that govern this increasingly vibrant and transnational sphere. Lutfi, who is at once a cultural historian and a self-taught artist, formally entered the field of visual arts in Egypt during the early 1990s just as major changes were occurring within it, the most important of which is the visible expansion of an international, private curator market in Egypt that is perceived as a threat to the national state-run visual field.
