Dr. O, Pop Physician, 2022

Dr. O - Pop Physician, 2022

Edition of 3, 2AP (comes with a certificate signed by the artist)

Digital Print on Photo Matte Paper

30.48 x 22.80 cm

Developed by Dr. O with Blake Karim Mitchell 

Omar Kholeif a.k.a Dr. O was uprooted from their childhood home of Cairo, Egypt at 3 months of age. But Mama always kept a bedroom for the first of her four sons, Omar, who was born on her birthday in 1980-something. 

With its signature luminescent blue wallpaper, the bedroom was kitsch chic at its best. But Dr. O never got to see it in-person. Not that they could remember, anyway. Nearly 40 years on, Dr. O’s bedroom remains unchanged. The wallpaper now yellowed and peeling. 

Mama sent Dr. O this childhood picture—a picture within a picture, with Dr. O donning their favourite nautical childhood sweater that she had kept for him for all those years (pictured within). 

The WhatsApp message sent with this photo was the first correspondence between Mama and son, after a silence for more than 2 years. Dr. O’s breed of Pop, they realised, must have first begun with that very first bedroom aesthetic!

Dr Omar Kholeif CF FRSA aka Dr. O is an author of prose and poetry, a historian of the academy and its peripheries and a curator of vanquished and suppressed archives. They have worked as a broadcaster, filmmaker, editor, publisher, and museum director. Over the last two decades, their work has concentrated on the evolving nature of networked image culture in relation to intersectional questions emerging in the field and study of ethnicity, race, and gender. Their lines of inquiry have come to life in over 60 exhibitions, and in nearly 40 authored, co-authored, and/or edited books, which have been translated into 12 languages. 

Click here for more information about the artist