A Red Thread Stuck in My Throat 
Lecture performance, 2019

In this early work, Mai Al Shazly explores the representation of the self within the urban fabric, examining how bodies navigate public and private space. Through a combination of photographic and collage works, the performance employs visual storytelling to address themes of privacy, visibility, and the often-unspoken boundaries people encounter in everyday life.

The city becomes both a backdrop and a character—dense, disordered, and alive with informality and marginality. Through shadow, movement, and fragmented narratives, Al Shazly reimagines Cairo as a space of ambiguity and resistance, proposing ways of engaging with its chaos without being consumed by it.

Featured in the exhibitions;
at the Faculty of Humanities in the Mellon 30th Anniversary Seminar Series, Mapping African Futures, on the topic of Art, chaired by Zen Marie, at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.