I Was Going to Work by Nourhan Maayouf

A hybrid picture book by Nourhan Maayouf

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“Invest in a floating city or gentrify a submerged one.”

Nourhan Maayouf’s I Was Going to Work is a hybrid sci-fi picture book by the Cairo-based artist, in which the proto-cyborg citizens of Happy Land Nation establish new-fashioned diurnal rhythms against the ever-present backdrop of a monorail to nowhere and its pillars, idle and idolatrous.

Across forty-four spreads of what might be thought of as a picture book for adults, Maayouf delves into every aspect of a deeply familiar society in which retrograde devolution is billboarded as reinvention by Orwellian technocrats and speculators.

And yet pockets of the cyborg population continue striving, dreaming, craving, protesting, gleaning, and inventing. For a situation to be bleak, some notion of beauty must remain tenaciously rooted where it matters most.

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2025
Edition of 500
92 pages, paperback, 14×20 cm, b&w offset, sewn & glued
Printed on Arctic Munken Print Cream 115 and Pure Rough 300
Designed by Damian Nowak
ISBN 978-83-68165-09-8

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Nourhan Maayouf is an artist based in Cairo, Egypt. She obtained her MA degree in Arts in Public Spheres from EDHEA, Switzerland. In addition to her photography, video, and installations, she is the author of the zine Homemade: Tales from Egyptian Youth During Confinement.