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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 Nov. - 1 Dec. 1999 Issue No. 457 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 Nov. - 1 Dec. 1999 Issue No. 457
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Martin McInally; Randa Shaath
Drowning in the shallows
By Nigel Ryan
Al-Warraq, Al-Dahab and Qursaya -- three islands, in the heart of Cairo, in the heart, indeed, of the Nile, or so the title of Mohamed Abla and Randa Shaath's joint exhibition at Cairo Atelier would have us believe. The show is subtitled Art Works and Photography, hardly a neutral description, and one that begs a few more questions than it actually answers. What, if anything, distinguishes the art work from the photograph? Not quite the place, here, to enter such a hackneyed debate, but then neither is the Atelier, despite its dusty-layered feel.
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters For several months now Abla and Shaath have been recording the life of these islands, inhabited -- unofficially, of course, and perhaps not for much longer -- by thousands of people. How long they will remain on these islands, where many have lived for several generations, remains an open question: land is valuable in a city as intent on burgeoning as Cairo and these tracts in the river, so long over-looked, are beginning to be eyed hungrily by those most voracious of entrepreneurs, the property developers. Where these people will go once the developers get their way -- alas, it is one axiom of modern life that remains always true, developers do, eventually, get their way, whatever the human cost -- is anyone's guess. Within such a context In the Heart of the Nile assumes elegiac qualities -- it documents communities that are threatened, that may well cease to exist altogether in the near future.
The documentary aspect, almost inevitably, perhaps, is stronger in the photographic works. It is an accident of process that the camera catches an embarrassment of detail: the striking thing about Randa Shaath's photographs is that despite the accretion of significant details there is no embarrassment, no sense of intrusion. She photographs people going about their daily business with an intimacy that is not betrayed, an intimacy that remains in the finished product, which is no mean feat.
Life, one knows, happens beyond the frame of these photographs -- it continues out of sight, unrecorded and very much the same. Heads are cut, boats sliced in half by the frame, as people continue with their lives, mending nets, washing vegetables, fishing, emphasising the impression that these are, indeed, real slices of real lives. Occasionally the perspective becomes too tilted, the framing too self conscious, as in one rather beautiful picture of a fishing boat floating on a table of water, foregrounded by nets full of fish. Tellingly, this is one of only three photographs in the show that is devoid of human presence and of those three one boasts a scarecrow, a human stand-in: a formal, compositional exercise, its inclusion is easy to understand, though its Japanese, wood-cut stasis is strangely out of place.
Where Shaath frames her black and white photographs with a seeming abruptness that stresses continuity Mohamed Abla's monotypes are often too neatly centred, too consciously composed. Surprisingly, some of the smallest images work best -- a girl stepping into the river, tentative, expectant, excited, surprised, all convincingly described in a print that covers just a few square inches, executed in a medium that is notoriously difficult to control. Many of the monotypes exhibit technical know-how, a familiarity with the medium sufficient to delineate the complex folds of a white galabiya caught in the sun in a single stroke. Yet others -- three boys playing in the river, viewed through splashes of water dripped onto the plate -- are impressively energetic. The same splashing trick, though, applied to the washing of a horse, becomes too literal, too contrived.
Perhaps there are too many backgrounds framed by bridges, too much shallow water as foreground conceit. Occasional prints -- a boat, barely contained by the frame, crammed with humanity and its domestic animals -- seem to strive after the formal purity of classic woodcuts, and it is a Japanisme that works, as it does not quite work in the photograph.
Here, in the heart of the Nile, there is water everywhere. Nothing, though, is wishy washy: certainly not in Randa Shaath's photographs. These people live on the water, and in the end it will be their demise. And that is the real cost of the Nile views the property developers covet. They are views that will be devoid of people like this.
Until 1 December The Townhouse is exhibiting recent paintings by Martin McInally and Kaare Troelsen, sculptural pieces by Amina Mansour and an installation by Shady El-Noshokaty. On the third floor are paintings by Leen Vrogindewiij.
Martin McInally's work is carefully callibrated. Plans for Leaving Atlantis, a series of swimmers, lost in a sea of blue, swirl above architectural drawings. Yet other pieces are framed by rulers, the most interesting being a series of nine small drawings, the ruler frames broken. A crouching figure rises, frame by frame, above which is written a particular quality -- kindness, generosity, courage etc. If it does not quite live up to the portentous artist's statement that accompanies the show this is no bad thing: these nine pieces can stand by themselves, so to speak. They enjoy a sufficient existence as things which is not the case with the third bit of McInally's trinity, a series of works the artist calls Brothers. Here, the image is blurred by appended texts, to the detriment of each. It is difficult to frame such a cacophony of conceptions as neatly, or as carefully, as the artist appears to wish. But there are consolations, not least a Baconesque image of two men wrestling. McInally, you leave the two galleries thinking, doesn't need a ruler to draw.
Next door Kaare Troelsen exhibits larger, more ostentatiously decorative pieces. There is an absence here, an intimation of leaving, all too often literally in place, the ghost outline of a suit case, or, just in case you miss the point, in one painting of a domestic interior is an aeroplane. The juxtapositions -- intimating the coexistence of different realities, different lives -- are often a little trite -- an earthen ware water pot, or ghostly outline of, next to a gleaming, stainless steel sink. Less literal presences, less ostentatious ghosts, would be better: a crumpled, unmade bed still retains the presence of the sleeper. A more lyrical way to the same effects, until, that is, you notice that Troelsen has added a spider to the bed sheets. It should have been edited out.
Upstairs Amina Mansour shows Cotton Sculptures and Related Works. It is the most precisely poised piece of the current show -- perfectly suited to the space. White Styrofoam flowers are stuck in a Plexiglas box, pristine, alien, hanging against the crumbling walls. Quilted tulips -- white cotton, again in a Plexiglas box -- just as alien, just as disturbing, against the same, crumbling walls. Mansour has perfectly judged the space, and the distance -- everything hangs precariously on the edge, tooth grindingly close in the case of Vitrine 1, a huge glass case, supported on wooden legs that end in carved hands with scarlet talons. A terrifying manicure. And inside the case, in a porcelain vase, set on velvet and against a gold panel, a funereal arrangement of white, cotton flowers. It is Miss Havershams wedding bouquet before the rot set in. Never has white cotton looked so malign. Would this have worked in the anaethetised space of a more conventional gallery? Almost certainly not. But here it is perfect. It closes on 1 December.
