Sawi Laila

Sawi Laila is a multidisciplinary Egyptian artist based in Switzerland, currently undertaking a Master of Art in Public Spheres at EDHEA Arts School in Valais, Switzerland. Sawi has been working in theater since 2005, and their work includes storytelling, dancing, singing, puppet shows, interactive theater, writing, clown, and street theater. This experience had an important influence on their current performance work in the public sphere. They have also worked extensively in the Theatre of the Oppressed, an organization focused on the empowerment of women, children, and minorities in Egypt through theater. This experience deeply informed Laila’s own creative approach, and they view artistic production as a powerful form of resistance against oppressive social and political hierarchies and dynamics such as patriarchy and capitalism. Their works often take the form of performance and theater in the public space, using the body, sound, text and video. They are deeply interested in the transformative capacity of these mediums to create social and political change in the public sphere. Currently Sawi’s artistic work is exploring the notion of safe space in relation to gender politics , border politics, and the notion of safe space. Recent works include ‘Fuck Borders’, which is a performance work that uses the collected stories of people’ struggles with national borders, as a way to reveal the limitations placed on bodies by the structures of patriarchy, capitalism and western imperialism. Through these stories, the work examines how empathy and vulnerability can be present in the public space through the interaction of performer and audience, and confronts the stark realities of border politics in the contemporary moment.