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Malak Helmy (b. Alexandria, Egypt, 1982) is based in Cairo, and her art focuses on video, text-based works, and collective initiatives. Much of Helmy’s video work visually references the new cultural and architectural constructs of her native Egypt, disputing their too-easy claim on reality and seeking a truer center for psychical meaning. The rhythm of her videos emulates that of desire, but the pathos of the work is of desire left waiting, as time—and its trappings of expectation, language, will—is suspended. With this deft poetry, Helmy’s video art succinctly and beautifully encapsulates the haunting liminality that defines this historical moment, in Egypt and everywhere. She sets up environments and narratives in which language and landscape collaborate to perform and possess each other’s actions and qualities at will. Malak’s work has been exhibited in the 64th and 63rd Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014, 2013) Agitationism, EVA International Ireland’s Biennial (2014); The Disappearance, CCA Singapore (2014); Weather Permitting, 9th Mercosul Biennial (2013). Her recent solo shows include The Passions of the Trash Drive at Nile Sunset Annex (2013) and Lost Referents of Some Attraction at the Sharjah Gallery at the American University in Cairo (2014). Malak lives and works in Cairo, Egypt.