The Mountain Cannot Repair Itself

The Mountain Cannot Repair Itself is a group exhibition at Gypsum Gallery in Cairo, running from 6 to 30 October 2026. It gathers textile-based work by six artists: Rawan Abbas, Omar Abd Elbaqi, Aisha Azab, Marianne Fahmy, Gözde İlkin and Layla Tag. Fabric is the material at the centre of the show. The opening took place on Tuesday 6 October, from 7pm to 9pm.

The gallery frames cloth as something people have always taken with them. It is folded, packed for journeys and handed from parents to children. Worn against the skin, it protects and comforts, and it holds memories of touch. Use, work and the passing years leave traces on it, and those traces become a record of their own. In this reading, a line of stitches can follow the shape of the land, draw a border or close a tear. The exhibition looks at fabric as the place where the body, the landscape and history cross.

Three of the artists already have a record of working with cloth. Gözde İlkin, who lives in Istanbul, builds her pieces from household fabrics she has gathered over the years, such as tablecloths, curtains and duvets. She works into them with loose thread and thin paint. Gypsum gave her solo shows in 2016 and 2022. Marianne Fahmy, an Egyptian artist based in Alexandria, works mainly in film and installation, and also makes jacquard tapestry and hand embroidery. Rawan Abbas, who works in Cairo, embroiders and crochets, and collects offcuts from dressmakers and seamstresses.

Gypsum was set up in Cairo in 2013 by the curator Aleya Hamza. It works from a ground-floor flat on Road 218 in Degla, Maadi. The exhibition can be seen from Saturday to Wednesday, 12pm to 8pm, until 30 October. The gallery is closed on Thursday and Friday.