Issue No.590
Culture
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13 - 19 June 2002 Issue No.590 Culture |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
In progress:Cut, weld, file, shine
Zeinab Khalifa, jeweller, studied philosophy at Ain Shams University, learned jewellery-making in workshops in Cairo's Gamaliya/Al-Hussein district, and has had exhibitions of jewellery and installations made from recycled materials. She is the proprietor of Gallery Noun, Heliopolis.
I really enjoy working on installations. After my last exhibition director Raafat El-Mihi offered me a floor in his Galal Cinema Studio, an old studio in Hadayek which he has taken and is renovating. I was thrilled. Imagine, a place to do anything you want.
I still don't know what my new installation will be about. Probably the Arab region -- I can't help it, that's where my mind is these days. Palestine... It will probably be in my usual, satirical style, like in my last exhibition with the dolls. In that installation I tried to deal with the idea of consumerism, consumption, the overuse of ideas, say, of "boys" and "girls", how they become reduced, summarised, simplistic, how we unconsciously repeat things like, "We have a 7,000 year civilisation." We don't think of what it means to say this. "A 7,000 year old civilisation": so what? Who worked to make this civilisation?
In my installations I try to show how cheap it can all become -- through the kind of materials I use, the method of display, and the use of all manner of symbols. In the show before last I used paper and tin, tried to show how symbols of religion, homeland, women's liberation can become cheapened. From my first exhibition, at the Atelier, on nouveau- riche weddings I used tin, tried to trivialise symbols of consumerism and make them cheap.
I am not against the idea of buying and selling -- I am a jeweller who for 12 years has earned my living selling what I make. Earning a livelihood, working, is not the same thing as consumption and consumerism.
My father was a merchant, and owned several grocery shops, retail and wholesale, in a shaabi (popular) district of Cairo. He believed the English were the best, and to give your kids an education you sent them to English schools -- I lived that contradiction. He owned a rabi' (a traditional Arab version of the modern apartment building) in front of the apartment building in which we lived, in Ataba. And there in the rabi' there were people from Nubia, the Said, the oases... The sheer variety and beauty of shaabi jewellery, since then, has taken my eye.
At first I got into this craft of jewellery because I wanted to be able to wear something different. So I designed jewellery. Then I began to learn, like any other sanay'i (craftsman) in warshas (workshops) in Gamaliya. Every day for three years. Daily. Morning to evening.
The first jeweller I learned from, Mohamed Hassan, had a workshop that made only chains. I worked with him for a year and a half. He taught me how to cut, weld, file, shine, how to make one chain-link connect with the next.
Traditionally it is men who work silver so at first he was surprised when I asked him to teach me. A woman working in a warsha doesn't work as a craftsperson, but works to serve the craftsman, handing him things, lining things up, preparing for him to weld. She does not work on the material itself. Women do not come near the fire.
But I do these things. I know how to get my sheets of silver ready, exactly what size, how to cut, weld -- all the secrets of the craft. After Mohamed Hassan I entered into a partnership with 'Amm George who worked in Arab style jewellery. And I continued for two years in the learning process. Now I have my own workshop in the Khoronfish area of Gamaliya. But of course one is always learning.
Another development in my career involved working with masses and uneven surfaces, making jewellery that is not inspired by the broad, smooth surfaces on which you then work detailed decoration of the Arab tradition. I wanted to work with the material itself, so I did, and had an exhibition at the Atelier.
The jewellery you see here in the shop is inspired mainly by the Arab style. They are made with the arty type who wants a unique, tasteful piece that no one else is wearing in mind. My customers are from a different social class and cultural background from my jewellery's shaabi source of inspiration. Unfortunately. The Nubian woman's numbered pieces, more if rich, fewer if not so rich, of jewellery were her trousseau, a sign of social status, capital investment, not a fashion accessory.
Last installation I decked out the dolls I constructed with jewellery that I had made from the materials used for donkey- and horse-cart accessories.
Several years ago, in a collective exhibition, I made jewellery from tin, used brass, Coca Cola bottle caps, old wood, a stone, all street materials, garbage. The exhibition organiser said we'd sell them. I said no, no one will buy them. But she insisted. So I priced them at LE10, 15, she said price them up. I said no way, I can't, I can't fool people... And all was sold. This German lady, I asked her, "Are you sure you want this stuff?" She said, "Yes, and I'll frame it!"
Financial difficulties aside, the work itself is its own reward. It is very pleasurable to begin with a wire and end with an earring. And when it sells it's even better. I am happy when I see people wearing a piece I've made.
But installation gives more freedom to your imagination. For example, you can bring a barrel and say: "I mean to say the Arabs these days are barrels of oil." I can sit there, look, get up, and ask: "Does this really look like an oil barrel? No it doesn't... maybe I should put a petrol pump so that it would show. " There's no one there saying "No, I don't like it", like with a ring. "No, the blue is too much here... oh if only the stone was red." No one buys an installation. It has no worth, in terms of money; it can't even buy a taamiya patty.
I'm going to make this barrel, and just the way I want to make it. Even if they don't like it, so what? It's not theirs to buy.
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