Image courtesy of Sayeda Misa Sourour

When There is No One Left to Sit
Sayeda Misa Sourour
September 19th - October 24th, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, September 19th, 8:00pm - 11:00pm

When There is No One Left to Sit presents recent works by Sayeda Misa Sourour. Images on film capture scenes from across Cairo—the artist’s familial home—alongside sculptures gesturing toward the form of the Monobloc chair.

 The “plastic chair” is perhaps the closest any common object has come to a platonic ideal. It occupies a transcultural, international seat as a designed object, carrying within it the potential to unite the globe in a state of post-xenophobic euphoria.

This two-year project began in Egypt in the summer of 2023. The images are less an attempt at spectacle than an act of commemoration—not tied to a singular event or time, but to the condition of being-in-place. Photographs of these manufactured seats function as portraits of neighbors, family reunions, elders, patrons of the afternoon sun, and observers of the bustle.

Upon returning stateside, a character—perhaps a universal mascot—became clear: the chair, specifically the Monobloc. An empty chair carries more than its shape—it carries absence, memory, and traces of lives not present. 

Empty plastic chairs, light and fragile yet robust and resistant to the elements, came to bear the weight of absence as they cradle the weight of the individual. This ubiquitous symbol—an old friend across nations and cultures—exceeds the role of personal memory or loss. The Monobloc becomes textile, becomes prayer, becomes wood, becomes grown, becomes sturdy, becomes weightless, becomes reoccupied—in spirit, by spirit.

An object of daily endurance, it reminds us that even in times of atrocities, the act of sitting holds the possibility of continuity, of community, and of resistance. To sit, to pause, to gather—these are gestures that persist despite systemic demands that we remain unsettled.

While continuing this work a year later in Egypt, just hours from the border, rest felt impossible. When genocide unfolds just beyond the crest, how can one repose when bombs fall like rain just two hours away? How can the feeling body rest when each moment brings another neighbor to martyrdom?

And yet, our bodies and hearts are tired. The belief that rest—or being-in-community—will liberate us and our global family has become strained. Many do not sit—not because they refuse, but because they do not remain with us here. When opportunities for rest become fewer, we must reimagine our effort and struggle as play, as performance, to transmute the heavy weight into lightness.

Sayeda Misa Sourour is an Egyptian interdisciplinary artist, designer, and fabricator currently based in Chicago, IL. Stories are welded, joined, carved, and curated in her designs. Mediums span from furniture, sculpture, puppetry and performance. She explores the tension between humor and cultural concern. Sourour critiques the experience of being Arab in the western world, searching for a place to rest from the absurdity of it all.

Sourour holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2025, she co-founded Bodock Gallery in Chicago. Her work has been shown in various galleries, with exhibitions at Comfort Station (Chicago, IL) and Design Museum of Chicago. She has performed at Electric Forest (Rothbury, MI), Elastic Arts (Chicago, IL), Links Hall (Chicago, IL), In the Heart of the Beast Theater (Minneapolis, MN), among others.