'Red Gold' Is on View at Mattress Factory Through October 18

Yasmine El Meleegy’s 'Red Gold' is on view at Mattress Factory through Sunday, October 18. The exhibition is El Meleegy’s first solo exhibition in the United States.

The Cairo-based artist uses salt as a central medium to explore local tradition, foreign influence, globalization, and the economics of sun-dried tomato production in Egypt’s Nile Valley.

Blended with water and cornstarch, the material is cast into custom molds, forming square reliefs depicting dried tomatoes, grasshoppers, harvesting knives, and nightshade plants. A vacuum-sealed bag of hand-painted replica tomatoes hangs at the gallery entrance, echoing the produce’s final commercial form.

In two weeks’ time, the tomatoes will shrink in size while their market value increases by more than twenty times that of their freshly picked selves.

The exhibition presents the sun-dried tomato industry as a lucrative export market that could vanish as political and economic conditions change. It also connects that dynamic to challenges associated with monocropping and large-scale agribusiness, including effects on working conditions, biodiversity, and traditional local agricultural practices.