Rasha Kahil. In Your Home

Caledonian Road, N7, London

Mare Street, E8, London

Kastanienallee, Mitte, Berlin

Caledonian Road, N7, London

Adma, North Beirut

Hackney Wick

all images from the series, In Your Home
c-type prints, 90 x 60 cm each, 2011
courtesy of the artist

From 2008 through 2011, the Beirut-born, London-based artist RASHA KAHIL took furtive self-portraits of her naked body tucked into the folds of another person’s domestic space. This appropriation of interiors is captured in a series entitled ‘In Your Home‘ which play with presence and absence as KAHIL moves around and her body – the only constant within all the photographs – evolving in time.

In Your Homecame about quite intuitively in 2008. I was staying at a friend’s house in Berlin, and as he left me alone in his flat one evening, I starting playing around with a new 35mm point-and-shoot camera I had just acquired from ebay. After taking a few still-lifes in his flat, I pointed the camera back at me, and with the use of the self-timer, shot self-portraits nude in his kitchen and bedroom.

I never told him what I did, there was a thrill in knowing that he was unaware of the fact that I ran around his place in the buff and recorded the experience. It was my memento to keep. And that was the birth of the project. From then on, whenever I found myself alone in someone’s flat, even if for just a few minutes while they popped out to buy cigarettes, or cook in the kitchen, I’d whip out my point-and-shoot and photograph myself nude in the available domestic space, unbeknownst to the host. RASHA KAHIL for Dazed Digital, November 2011

And good news: this series is also available in a book, which follows the project in
its entirety between 2008 and 2011, more info here


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