HERitage emBODYment presents: Sekhmet Unraveled

Sekhmet Unraveled is a multi-modal, multi-lingual (English, Arabic, Fadija, Coptic) performance by the award-winning HERitage emBODYment ensemble. Created in response to the museum’s Egyptian and Nubian galleries, Sekhmet Unraveled merges contemporary realities with ancestral memories to re-author the histories of Egyptology, museum collections, and what it means to be Egyptian, Nubian, and American. From heartfelt, poetic personal anecdotes, to satirical songs and clowning, to funerary and celebratory rituals, Sekhmet Unraveled invites audiences to celebrate contemporary and ancient cultures in a museum space, and re-think how they engage with history, art, and heritage within and beyond the museum.

HERitage emBODYment views the personal as political, our bodies serve as extensions of our ancestors’ memory as we intertwine our lived histories with theirs. Nabra Nelson is Nubian-Egyptian-American, and Sarah Fahmy is Egyptian raised in England and the US–raised in different diasporas, though our identity stories are similar. As multi-disciplinary theatre makers, performers, and scholars, our ensemble emerged out of a frustration with structural inequities and Orientalist mis-representation in mainstream US media and theatre of Arab, African, Muslim women, and the coloniality of Egyptian antiquities.

Dr. Sarah Fahmy is a decolonial scholartist, who works at the intersection of performance and identity politics, Arab and North African theatres, and eco-feminism.

Nabra Nelson is a writer, community organizer, independent scholar, and theater creator from Nubia (Fadijja tribe of the village of Abu Simbel), Egypt, and California.

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Host or Publisher The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures