Moving objects: futuring and enhancing ancient Egypt through modern art

This contribution introduces interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues between Egyptologists, heritage professionals and artists of several genres (painting, poetry, ballet, dance, photography) around un-provenanced and misplaced ancient Egyptian museum objects. The initiated creative responses to ancient Egyptian material culture form part of a unique venture called The Museum of Lies within a wider project of literal and cultural (re-)discovery of neglected ancient Egyptian artifacts kept in Cyfarthfa Castle Museum, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. This approach widens the discussion about ancient Egyptian material culture beyond Egyptology and offers new ways of understanding and interpretation. Creative outcomes are exhibited/performed together with the objects and their academic descriptions as simultaneous types of cultural representations and extended object biographies in annual pop-up exhibitions. The emotional power and imagination connected with artistic representations allow to invoke and capture a potential which is inherent to the objects, but otherwise not detected.