This Show is my Business (2008) is a single channel video that borrows from the classical
genre of portraiture in its frontal figurative presentation of a heroic protagonist, and from the
contemporary form of the media interview of a celebrity. In a public projection of an intimate
encounter with a stranger, it forms a candid yet guarded exploration of gender, profession
and ethnic questions, and an artist’s quest for portraying another artist. Khaled takes an
interest in belly-dance performers as artists confronting issues related to gender identity
and notions of cultural ‘authenticity’ in a field located outside the boundaries typically
claimed by contemporary art. The project takes as its point of departure Khaled’s accidental
discovery of Khaled Mahmoud, a popular London-based belly dancer born in Cairo, who
the artist found after trying to ‘google’ his own name.
