Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/13/2025 - 12/06/2026
12:00 am
Location
Mattress Factory
Categories
Cairo-based artist Yasmine El Meleegy takes salt as her central medium to explore the shifting tides of globalization through tomatoes.
Under the relentless sun in Egypt’s Nile Valley, lie row upon row of bright red, freshly cut Roma tomatoes. In two weeks’ time, the tomatoes will shrink in size yet grow in importance — as popular sun-dried tomatoes, dubbed “red gold”.
Blended with water and cornstarch, salt is cast into custom molds, forming square reliefs imprinted with imagery drawn from the thriving sun-dried tomato economy. In the gallery, white tiles line the floor of a room-sized greenhouse, their delicate surfaces depicting dried tomatoes, grasshoppers, knives used for harvesting and nightshade plants. At the gallery entrance hangs a vacuum-sealed bag of hand-painted replica tomatoes (an uncanny echo of the produce’s final commercial form).
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