Interview bij Kunstroute 2026

Pansee Atta turns the Egyptian Goose into a Protector God of Migrants

By Jodie Keijner

Who owns history? That question runs like a thread through the work of artist Pansee Atta. Drawing inspiration from ancient Egypt, she explores how heritage, mythology and historical objects get new meanings in the present day. In her work, ancient stories intersect with contemporary questions of identity, migration and representation.

Pansee Atta was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in Egypt, and moved to Canada with her family around the age of ten, where she studied and spent a significant part of her life. Since 2023, she has been living and working in the Netherlands. All these places have shaped her identity, with Egypt remaining at its core. Not the Egypt of sarcophagi in museum cases and Hollywood films about Cleopatra, she says, but the Egypt she knows: a country where the past is woven into everyday life, where ancient temples stand in the middle of cities and the pyramids form part of the view on your way to work.

Beyond the Glass Case

The gap between stereotypical representations of Egypt and the way the country is actually experienced by those who live there is the driving force behind much of Atta's work. "I’m interested in how cultures keep evolving over time,” she explains. “Often we view history as something static, but people keep interpreting and using stories in different ways.”

A new project usually begins with a specific place and the history attached to it. She immerses herself in museum archives, studies historical records in depth, and searches for stories that have been forgotten, overlooked or pushed aside. For her contribution to the recent group exhibition What Have We Here? at TROEF, she invited visitors to combine fragments from the collection of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden with contemporary Dutch symbols to create new hybrid signs and creatures. A bird, a sneaker and a piece of hieroglyphic script could become a temple with windmill blades. "These are not just figures to look at; you can touch them, move them around, and make them your own."

For Atta, this interactivity is not merely a pleasant addition but an essential part of her vision on how art should be experienced. Whereas art and culture are often presented in museums from a distance, untouchable behind glass, she emphasizes active participation, the reclaiming of heritage, and the collective creation of new meanings.

Hurma

A recurring theme in Atta's work is the concept of hurma, an Arabic term that is difficult to translate directly. It refers to a combination of dignity, privacy, and respect for a person's bodily and personal integrity. Atta explored the concept as part of her research for InHerit: Heritage in Transformation, a project of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg in Berlin. There, she used hurma to reflect on the way museums display mummified human remains.

Today, the mummy is often seen less as part of a historical ritual intended to provide a dignified passage into the afterlife and more as a mythical being belonging alongside vampires and werewolves. "It's easy to forget that this was once a living person, a body that was treated with a lot of love and care in order to gain access to the afterlife." Art, she argues, can be a way of restoring some of that dignity, perhaps by concealing parts of the body rather than displaying them, or by presenting the remains in a way that is closer to how the deceased might once have been remembered by loved ones. "Standard museum practice is often too cold for that. Maybe that's where my art comes in."

Modern Gods

Although Atta draws much of her inspiration from the past, she often uses historical symbolism to explore contemporary themes. One of her current projects involves the creation of a new god. Not a god from a temple or a museum display case, but a god with a long pink leg and a chestnut-brown patch around its eye: the Egyptian goose. Originally imported to the Netherlands as an ornamental bird for private garden collections, the species escaped and can now be found everywhere, along highway verges, in city parks, and among urban communities.

"I try to think of it as a modern version of an ancient Egyptian god," Atta says, "a protector god of migrants and diaspora." In ancient Egypt, geese held religious significance and were associated with creation myths and divine powers. In the Netherlands, however, the same bird has taken on a very different role. For Atta, this shift carries an intriguing parallel. The Egyptian goose is at once familiar and foreign, original and newly rooted. It is a creature that has moved, adapted, and found its own place. This image, the goose as a deity of the city, will form the basis of her contribution to the Kunstroute.

Making Space for the Present

Atta has been active as an artist in Leiden for just over a year. She works primarily from home, appreciating the flexibility it gives her to create whenever inspiration strikes, whether that is for half an hour between other activities or for extended periods of focused work. Her artistic process often begins with historical research. As abstract ideas take shape, she develops digital sketches on her computer, which eventually become three-dimensional objects made from canvas, paint, plastic and electronics. She does not limit herself to a specific medium. "I don't have a preference for one specific technique. For me, it's more about a collection of ideas." Despite Leiden's many museums and cultural institutions, Atta found it difficult to gain access to the city's art scene. She sees a striking contradiction: a city rich in cultural history, home to the highest concentration of museums in the Netherlands and the birthplace of Rembrandt. A city that proudly presents itself as a cultural centre, yet offers relatively little space for contemporary art. Aside from TROEF, a small exhibition space on the Middelstegracht, there are few venues dedicated to contemporary and experimental artistic practices.

Where her career will ultimately take her, Atta does not yet know. For now, however, she expects to stay in the Netherlands. She notes that many Dutch museums are open to discussions about the representation of different cultures, restitution and repatriation, and the acknowledgement of historical injustices. At the same time, she observes that debates about decolonising museum collections in the Netherlands tend to focus primarily on objects from former Dutch colonies, while paying less attention to material acquired through colonial structures in places where the Netherlands was not itself the colonial power, such as Egypt. "I think there's still some work for me to do there."

Pansee Atta's work can be seen during the Kunstroute at Rapenburg 49.