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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters When the lion roars
By Mohamed Yousri
Inside a dark room a hammer hangs on a string in front of which five screens are placed next to each other. Every five minutes the five screens flash with the familiar television colour bars before displaying different scenes simultaneously.
"I am a hero, you are a hero. Five screens and a Hammer" -- a video installation by Hassan Khan, attempts to deconstruct notions of heroism. And as the five screens compete for the spectators' attention it is the middle one that wins.
Nobody speaks directly to the camera though it is not difficult to match the sounds with the scenes.
"When the lion roars and sees people flinch and draw back, it gives him self confidence, but that is not heroism," says a voice, presumably the lionkeeper's, on a first encounter at the zoo. Another encounter occurs at the October War Panorama: "There is heroism everywhere, even plants have heroism" intones a voice accompanied by news footage of the October War. Yet another encounter, preceded by images of kitsch superheroes Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarznegger, and Amitab Batchan, is in a gym where a muscle man struts his stuff as a voice extols the heroic necessity of keeping fit.
Words -- peace, prosperity, development -- appear in Arabic several times. Scenes of highways, fountains, towers, and public squares jump from one screen to the next. Words said earlier are repeated mechanically, decontextualised, awkward, accorded an eerie import. Five times a glass is shattered with a hammer before a background of white ceramic tiles, suddenly reminding the spectator that a hammer hangs behind, and possibly inviting him or her to do the same.
"I tried to use the hammer," says Khan, "as an emphatic device, emphasising the experience as a whole and strengthening it. It is... significant because it appears on the screen, but it is also a recognisable, familiar, everyday object. It is a way of creating a personal tension for the viewer."
Of tension there was an abundance. Watching five screens simultaneously, absorbing the information transmitted, constitutes an optical and conceptual challenge. Yet the way in which the artist blended the room and its components with the display itself was both witty and pertinent to the overall experience, and juxtaposing heroic posturing with the shattering of glass invited a multitude of interpretations. The title of the work, contrasting the idea and the reality, adds a seemingly awkward statement "I am a hero, you are a hero" to an elementary index of inventory "Five screens and a Hammer." A model, of sorts, for the entire installation.
Being bombarded with information for a half an hour, a calm stroll in the surrounding galleries seemed like the perfect thing to do. Yet Abdel-Khalek Hussein's watercolours of peasant women offered little beyond ersatz pastoralism. Abdel-Salam Eid, on the other hand, showed still-lifes alongside photographs, drawings and sculpture. The most impressive pieces were those in which elements of collage and painting were combined. One piece comprised an explosion of arabesque fragments pouring out of a tube, another a tusk spiralling aggressively out of a red canvas framed in wood. Most striking was his use of ropes framing empty canvases.
Adel Tharwat, mixing his media more daringly, presented a gaudy and bloody show with more than a hint of the dungeon. Dead lizards were stuck to canvases as though frozen in an attempt to crawl up the canvas, logs and wooden cubes were nailed with shining silver and golden bolts, hinting at crucifixion. Pieces of paper cut out from an old book of magic were surrounded by cryptic symbols, numbers, and figures, intensifying the occult atmosphere. And suddenly death and mystery lurked around every corner of the usually anaemic Gezira Art Centre.
