Let’s Roll? / نِلف؟ is a question about movement, escape, and the shifting borders between visibility and invisibility, using visual intervention and cultural juxtaposition as tools of inquiry. It explores what it means to navigate between two vastly different cultural realities, one where cannabis is legal, openly sold, and consumed in Canada, and another where it exists discreetly in the background, woven into Egypt’s everyday life through coded gestures, whispered jokes, and hidden rituals. The work highlights social, legal, and cultural disparities, while also reflecting on how cannabis is used as a form of escape, resistance, and emotional relief in restrictive environments.

Photographs of legal cannabis storefronts and official signage taken in Toronto serve as the visual core of the series. These images are printed in small formats and discreetly placed in locations across Egypt that are closely associated with underground cannabis use like traditional cafés, narrow alleyways, Nile boats, tuk-tuks and balconies where consumption remains hidden, stigmatized, and criminalized.

Handwritten Arabic phrases on the photographs, drawn from Egyptian street slang, television, cinema, and everyday speech, speak the language of relief, pleasure, rebellion, and survival. These fragments lend voice to the emotional undercurrents that shape why people turn to cannabis in the first place, often to cope with stress, hardship, or societal pressure.