Francesc Ruiz (Barcelona, 1971) is a visual artist whose output has been centred mainly on drawing since the 1990s; he has come up with a technique which he calls “expanded comic”. Applying certain strategies deriving from the world of conceptual art and Situationism he creates installations and art works connected with specific contexts. The city its sub-cultures and their offshoots provide the principal inspiration and thematic content for this artist. Featuring amongst his latest individual exhibitions are; The Yaois (Galeria Estrany-de la Mota, Barcelona, 2011), 100 i més (etHall, Barcelona, 2011), Gasworks Yaoi (Gasworks, London, 2010), and The Paper Trail, that was originally presented at Cairo’s Contemporary Image Collective in October of 2010.

The Paper Trail is made up of a collection of three pieces: The Green Detour, Cairo Newsstand and The First Comic Shop in Egypt. The first is a serial comic that mixes adventures based in Cairo featuring four of the principal Egyptian comic characters associated with that city: Tintin, Donald, Samir and Citizen Molido. The four characters symbolise key historical moments in the country and the city. Following them the comic guides us through some important locations the overall objective is to construct a possible history of the Egyptian comic. The second piece, Cairo Newsstand reproduces one of the temporary news kiosks that can be found around the city. A group of brought-to-life paper weights appear and occupy the stand using text bubbles to express themselves as a group, they make reference to the city itself, to life within the newsstand and the news itself that surrounds them daily, with comments that range from the popular wisdom to political allegory. The First Comic Shop in Egypt, ultimately, is a reflection on what must have been the first book shop specialising in comics within Egypt, a project that was met with a lot of problems and in the end could not be completed.