AK: How do you see the relationship between exterior and interior, both in terms of the individual and the public, and the interior physical anatomy and the aesthetic surface of the human body? DA: When I look at the surface I mainly search for signs of “superiority,” assertive bodies which stir aspiration or desire and invite assumptions about freedom, beauty and access. I’m mainly concerned with certain types of identities, such as dancers or circus acrobats for example, ones with conformist qualities and a common history of rigorous training, compliance, and systematic growth. The clash of the final image of unleashed potential with the history of struggle, registered in every bone, muscle, and joint, is what I decided to delve into in order to explore ideas related to constrained movement—the frustration and inability to reach certain emotional or physical ideals. I’m taking the growth process of one of these “superior” identities and reversing it, in order to match the outside with the inside, translate every emotional or mental failure into a dysfunction in movement.
From an interview between Allison Kave and Doa Aly on the occasion of the two-person online exhibition curated by Kave and featuring Aly and Juan William Chavez in 2007. I find a lot of what she says really problematic out of context and possibly even in context. However after talking with Jonathas Andrade about his first impressions of Cairo and his observation of the 'suicidal elegance' with which a man crosses the street in Egypt, I wanted to bring in some information about Aly's particular interest in the axes of power, movement and bodies.