The Imminent Departure of Anybody, Everybody, Somebody, Nobody, Antibody, Busybody and Others
Shown at: ‘Extra Time’, Chronus Centre, Shanghai (2013)

Ensemble of 18 renditions of the EXIT pictogram

“Now and then, one can find a way out of the here and now.
Always look for the exit sign.”

Eighteen identical fluorescent acrylic figures in vivid colours, adult human sized renditions of the “little running man” – the internationally adopted ISO standard pictogram denoting “EXIT” designed by Japanese graphic designer Yukio Ota – are suspended mid-air, facing different directions. The exits they mark seem not to be referring to points in space (since they do not conform to a single direction), but to multiple ways of escape out of the frozen snapshot of a moment of time.

Taken together, these 18 running men (Anybody, Everybody, Somebody, Nobody, Antibody, Busybody and Others) constitute for Raqs a team of players (and they are present in every place, ranging from Tahrir to Taksim), playing a series of gambits, or opening moves, that anyone might emulate to deal with the claustrophobic monotony of a regulated present. This could be a choreography, or a mandala, for time travel.

This work is adapted from The Things That Happen When Falling in Love, shown at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Tyneside (2010)