A representational dilemma
By
Nigel Ryan
"And then," wrote John Berger after visiting the Venice Biennale in 1958, "there was the pavilion of the United Arab Republic. Only occasionally do history and art correspond with each other as directly as they do here; but it remains a fact that this pavilion was the most-affirmative and vital of all the 1958 Biennale. I do not, of course, mean that geniuses have appeared overnight in Cairo. What makes these works outstanding is that they affirm, they are not defensive treaties. Man comes before things. Their language is largely traditional. It is sun-dried colours; its expressive use of decorative silhouettes, and its easy and unselfconscious simplifications deriving from traditional art and design. Yet it is the art of the West that appears by contrast to be not only academic, but also in the context of the emerging twentieth century world finished, exhausted, outlived."
It is difficult, from current vantage points, to even approach the euphoria that must have accompanied such group showings of art in the immediate post-revolutionary environment. However ideologically loaded Berger's assessment -- and he remains, almost half a century on, one of the most committed of art critics, and that in a very conventional sense -- it is impossible to ignore the optimism that it encompasses. The contrast between then and now could not be more stark.
Whatever one might think of the search for authenticity of which the Egyptian pavilion of 1958 was a result, whatever the position one adopts towards what has been termed, a little bombastically, perhaps, the emergence of a national style, the inevitable result of any comparison is an overwhelming sense of pathos. The trauma produced by the failure to realise the promises of 1952 continues to resonate: ignore it and your understanding of the cultural production of almost four decades is redundant.
The resentment continues; indeed, has become visceral. This year's Venice Biennale will feature works by Moataz Nasr and Wael Shawki. Nasr will be exhibiting work built around clay drums; Shawki will show asphalt clad houses, or simulacra of dwellings, supporting screens on which a series of synchronised videos will be shown. Hollow vessels make the loudest noise, even vessels as culturally embedded, as authentic, as the tabla. And bitumen, the most oleaginous product of the oil industry, is the stuff in which we are all destined to drown, is the stuff that marks the perimeters of our experience, that delimits the possibilities of that experience. It is oil that prescribes our horizons. The political component of both artists' work is fairly straightforward, though it could undoubtedly be opened up to a falling domino array of nuances.
Now one should not, of course, assume for a moment that the curatorial process is in any way more neutral than it was in 1958, or that the critical response to what is shown is less loaded. The repetition of such truisms should by now be obsolete. Sadly, it is not. There is a point at which it is not only wise, it is essential to remember that someone chooses what is shown, and that that choice is conditioned. The politics of representation tend to be downplayed in Egypt, or else played at such a shrieking pitch that any attempt to uncover meaning inevitably gets lost in the accompanying din. When convenient those who do the selection are denounced: think of the hysteria the screening of the BBC film Marriage Egyptian Style provoked in Egypt several years ago, the rabid denunciations seemingly provoked by a far from experimental documentary technique that allowed an ordinary, by which read poor, Egyptian woman to speak for herself and not be spoken for.
The virulence of such responses says a great deal about prevailing conditions. In the case of the film mentioned, it revealed rather more about the prejudices of the commentators, about those with access to the press, than it could possibly say about the subject of the documentary or -- slightly more contentiously -- about its makers.
There is a danger, and it is very real, that inclusion in high-profile international events be interpreted as somehow providing a stamp of validation for the participants. There is a danger, too, that the audience for such events be lulled into a belief that what they are seeing is somehow representative of the area within which it is produced. Both would be foolish assumptions.
What you see is what you get. What you see in Soeul, or Sao Paulo, or Venice, or the Centre of Arts, Zamalek, is precisely that: a weeding process has gone on, and much has been discarded so that this can be shown. The curator is king in this particular patch of the jungle, and it is silly to think that this particular aspect of art realpolitik does not impact on the final display.
None of which is intended to disparage the participants. It is simply to sound a note of caution. The dilemma, given the unequal balance of power between producer and consumer -- however much one may privilege the production of art as an activity it is still useful to reduce it to such equations -- is that the former will tailor production to the demands of the latter. The result is a particularly vicious circle in which the fixed ideas of the curator, his or her take on the cultural production of an entire region, becomes a self- fulfilling prophecy. It is a problem compounded when those who exercise choice flit in and out of the country their choice purports to represent.
In 1958 the art of the West may have looked exhausted, outlived. But money talks, and it almost always has the last word. And money is in the hands of the funders. And we know where the funding is.
