Susan Hefuna | Pars Pro Toto

HUO: Let’s talk about those architectural influences? In the literature about your works there is always mention of the Islamic woodwork from the urban areas of Cairo, which oscillate between visibility and invisibility.
SH: Mashrabiya.
HUO: Right, it’s all about the seeing and the not seeing, what I see, what sees me, what I don’t see and so on.
(Hans Ulrich Obrist Interview with Susan Hefuna, excerpt of the book)

Pars Pro Toto

The most comprehensive book yet about the Egyptian/German artist Susan Hefuna was developed in the course of a close dialog with the editor Hans Ulrich Obrist. Susan Hefuna has been working in the media of drawing, photography, installation and video since the early 1990s. She uses these various techniques to interwine levels of meaning and reflect many-layered codes, which she interprets in both concrete and abstract manners, Pars Pro Toto presents numerous new works by the versatile artist: Mashrabiya screens, vitrines on the streets of Cairo, masks, works on textile and drawings. Many of the Cairo works where created in workshops, on the streets, or in privat homes. From these recent works the book traces an arc back to earlier video works by the artist.
The interviews conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Susan Hefuna and Sudanese author Tayeb Salih are supplemented with poems by the famous Syrian poet Adonis.

Cover Design: Ben Wittner, eps5
Typefaces:
English display typeface:
NB 55MS by Stefan Gandl, Neubau
Arabic display typeface:
NB 55 AL by Shaharzad Khan, Mule Industry
English text typeface:
Thesis TheMix by Lucas de Groot
Arabic text typeface:
TheMix Arabic by Mouneer El Shaarani, Lucas de Groot and Pascal Zoghbi, designed in the framework of the Khatt Foundation's Typographic Matchmaking Project.