SUNSET OF THE PHAROAHS

Sunset of the Pharaohs is a video installation that unfolds at the intersection of visual art, cinema, and sociohistorical critique. The work comprises a monumental sculptural structure that projects outward from the screen like the bellows of an analog camera—an evocative form referencing early technologies of image-making and the corrective mechanisms embedded in visual representation. Constructed from cardboard and sheathed in 230 tanned sheepskins, the structure is both visceral and symbolic: part archaic machine, part animal hide, and part architectural relic. It extends the viewer’s realm, dissolving the line between observer and display, as well as between historical mechanisms and the projection site itself.

At the core of the installation is Jasper’s re-edit of Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1966 film Pharaoh, a cinematic epic adapted from Bolesław Prus’s late 19th-century novel about the collapse of ancient Egypt. In its original form, Pharaoh was widely read as a veiled critique of Poland’s communist regime—a parable about authoritarian rule, political paralysis, and the entrenchment of bureaucratic elites. Jasper strips this historical allegory to its bare elements by removing all human figures from the film through an exhaustive process of digital erasure. What remains is a haunting, depopulated mise-en-scène—temples, deserts, chambers, processions without bodies—that reveals the architecture of power without its human face. The effect is disorienting and powerful: a kind of archaeological cinema that forces the viewer to confront the emptiness at the heart of spectacle and empire.

This ghostly cinematic environment is infused with the words of poets Ahmed Fouad Negm and Tamim al-Barghouti, whose voices became vital to the political consciousness of the Arab Spring. Their poetry—defiant, lyrical, and rooted in popular resistance—serves not only as a sonic layer but also as a political intervention. In this context, the installation becomes a site of echo and resonance, where histories of domination and uprisings are overlaid across time and geography. The removal of actors from the film serves as a metaphor for the suppression of individual agency under authoritarian regimes, while the inclusion of revolutionary poetry reasserts that very agency through language and collective memory.

From an artistic perspective, Sunset of the Pharaohs interrogates the authority of the cinematic image and the conventions of historical narrative. By merging visual appropriation, sculptural installation, and poetic testimony, Jasper collapses the distinctions between fiction and reality, myth and memory. The work also challenges notions of authorship and authenticity, raising questions about whose stories are told, how they are framed, and who has the power to amplify or erase them.

From a sociopolitical standpoint, the work serves as a meditation on cycles of oppression and revolt, the fragility of empires, and the enduring human desire for justice and a voice. In the wake of the Arab Spring—and amid ongoing global struggles for liberation—Sunset of the Pharaohs functions as both a critical lens and a poetic monument. It does not offer resolution but invites viewers to reflect on how history is mediated, manipulated, and ultimately reclaimed by those who resist.