Opening: 455 Days by Mohamed Mahdy

Name: Opening: 455 Days by Mohamed Mahdy
Start: 2026-05-08T16:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-05-08T18:00:00+02:00
Location: Vestergade 29, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark

Schedule

Fri May 08 2026 at 04:00 pm to 06:00 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Vestergade 29, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark | Arhus, AR

Galleri Image presents the exhibition 455 Days by Mohamed Mahdy, curated by Farida Youssef. The exhibition opens on Friday, 8 May 2026 at 4-6 p.m.
In 455 Days, Mohamed Mahdy searches for his memories as a military conscript. In Egypt, all abled men are required to serve in the army for a certain period of time. Mahdy began his service in 2020, lasting 455 days. This is a new life for many conscripts. They are away from family, friends and the lives they used to lead. Like his fellow conscripts, he was allowed only periodic days of vacation and sporadic short phone calls to home.
A few months into his service, Mahdy managed to smuggle a camera phone. He photographed, amongst other things, a sandstorm, Hanafi the stray cat he raised and the trains his unit took to reach the nearest city. The nature of these photographs resembles the way one writes in a personal diary.
Mahdy’s efforts to remember become the focus of 455 Days. The exhibition is an acknowledgement of remembrance as a process shaped by how we articulate the past to ourselves. In the years since his military service, Mahdy revisited the memories from this period several times and in several forms. Each attempt is a search which conjugates remembering to reconstructing. What if all the iterations of his memories were brought together?
There are of course the photographs he had taken before. There are also letters where Mahdy describes some experiences. Finally, there are images of memories that he could not photograph. These were generated over three years using artificial intelligence programs as they developed.
Rather than simply bring the past to life, the exhibition enacts a speculative approach to memory and photography. These attempts become opportunities to imagine Mahdy in the act of remembering. 455 Days asks us to relish in those repetitions and hesitations that come with remembering and image-making.
EVENTS
GUIDED EXHIBITION TOUR
Saturday 9 May at 2 p.m., Galleri Image.
With Mohamed Mahdy and Farida Youssef.
SEMINAR: “Shifting Memories in 455 Days”
Tuesday 12 May at 4 p.m., Galleri Image.
with Mohamed Mahdy, Professor Jacob Lund and Associate Professor Magdalena Regina Tyzlik-Carver about the relationship between memory and images and what happens when it is mediated by technology. The seminar is moderated by Farida Youssef
About the artist
Mohamed Mahdy (Egypt, 1996) is a visual storyteller & Educator from Alexandria, Egypt. He graduated from Pharos University in Alexandria (PUA) with a degree in Arts and Design. He was awarded in 2021 Photography & Social Justice Fellowship with Magnum Foundation and in 2022 awarded a scholarship by Ecca Family and completed two diplomas at DMJX in Aarhus. In 2022, he was named by The Guardian as one of five emerging talents in photojournalism. Mahdy has had three solo shows in Egypt, and his work has been exhibited worldwide. He has won the World Press Photo 2023, both a regional and global award for his interactive web documentary Here the doors don’t know me, and the photography prize award. In 2025, he released Here the doors don’t know me as a photobook.
About the curator
Farida Youssef is a researcher and curator based in Cairo. She is interested in the value of spatial theory for artistic inquiries. As a research fellow at the British Museum, her research sought the inclusion of a local perspective on the Modern Egypt collection. She received a master’s from University College London with a focus on aesthetic theory.
The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation, The Augustinus Foundation, the Obel Family Foundation, The Louis-Hansen Foundation and The William Demant Foundation and Culture Resource (Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy).