Part of the show
Biased, unfair, and very partial: Nigel Ryan on the ninth Cairo International Biennale
It is foolhardy for any visual artist to think it possible to compete in a week when images of someone shining a torch into the mouth of Saddam Hussein appeared on television screens around the world. As an exercise in the grotesque it cannot be beaten. As an excoriating piece of propagandising no other torch can be held to it. As a statement of where we are today -- complete with breaking news flashed in endlessly repeating soundbites across the bottom of the screen and the slap them in the face then bang their heads against the wall graphics favoured by 24 hour news channels -- it is unlikely to be bettered. The recently manufactured icon of evil, surrounded by the paraphernalia of the crude in which today's media specialises, will become one of those privileged images by which future generations will seek to know us and give us a name. One thing is certain. The names will not flatter.
Pity, then, the poor artists, especially when they are in the business of exploring myth and fantasy, as the Cairo Biennale has asked them to do.
Best, though, to set out your stall honestly -- it's as good a place to start as any. So I have not yet made it to the Gezira Arts Centre, nor even the Mahmoud Khalil Museum or, more precisely, its Horizon Gallery annexe, though both venues have been coopted by the ninth incarnation of the Cairo International Biennale. I will, but next week. Which leaves only the Palace of Arts, in the Cairo Opera House grounds, and the Centre of Arts in Zamalek. It is, after all, only the first few days of this biennial jamboree, so two out of four is not such a bad score. And both places are crammed to overflowing.
Start with the Centre of Arts. The entrance to the unweildy space is occupied by a cardboard structure, part igloo, part cave, into which you are invited. Down the prehistoric equivalent of a corridor lies the prehistoric equivalent of the sitting room. Furniture is restricted to animal skins. On the far wall a seascape is projected. There is the muffled sound of wind. That this manufactured environment is disconcerting is hardly enough: an alarmingly large number of people do, after all, inhabit cardboard boxes, though not ones as ingeniously constructed as this, and certainly not through choice. I'm afraid this particular piece of Swiss art left a sour taste. You might want to load it with commentary on consumerism, but that is difficult. What it does undercore is the absolute dislocation of first world art practices from the lives of the poor. As an exercise of privilege it is disturbing. And there is nothing remotely homely about the parched moral landscape it inhabits.
Such fabricated environments are very much in evidence at the Biennale. Gamal Gad Meleka, an Egyptian now resident in Italy, invites the spectator into a bar code. I suspect I did the journey back to front, entering through the exit and exiting through the entrance. It hardly matters. Inside is a dark maze-like space, a couple of short corridors at sharp angles that lead to a larger room. Everything is black, except for the room where the darkness is punctuated by flashing numbers and the silence by pinging sounds.
Sadly, the whole thing is badly constructed. That the plywood structure does not fit together as well as it should, that daylight can be glimpsed through the cracks, may not be the artist's fault, but it is something that should be fixed. For now the impression made is of a shoddy, half-hearted theatricality. It is akin to visiting a down at heel fairground, and much less fun. It does Maleka no favours, and makes the Cairo Biennale look more amateurish than ever. Another of those instances when one reminds oneself that it is not written in tablets of stone that because this is a Ministry of Culture event things cannot be done properly. Cairo has no shortage of carpenters, any one of whom could have made a more competent job of this.
Top, a postcard from Johanna Kadl's project Speaking in Public, and publicity material for Gamal Gad Maleka's three dimensional construction of a barcode
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Forget the limitations that come with the unweildy nature of the space at the Centre of Arts. That these tend to be tackled without the slightest exercise of the imagination is par for the course. It is the details that are telling, and the way that they are ignored tells an awful lot about the priorities of such "international" events. In the basement of the Centre there is a partial reconstruction of a room. It is post- apocalyptic. Through the open door is a bed; a tangle of white gauze covers it. Draws are piled high in one corner, spewing their ill-assorted contents. The wallpapered wall is carefully stained, except where a picture once hung. The slightly cleaner bit of wallpaper is a remembrance of another time, when another kind of art was possible. At the base of the wall earth is piled. The whole thing is very stage-set: it invites the construction of narrative. But the gallery demands a different kind of illusion making than the stage. You can get away with not completely covering the plastic that protects the floor when you are building in the theatre because the audience is too far away to notice. The telltale bits of plastic sheeting peeping from beneath the piled earth here act as a worm in the salad. You know it shouldn't be there. When you spot it your appetite is gone. In the case of this piece, which hails from Argentina, such carelessness is a shame.
There is an empty room at the Centre of Arts that only a few days ago was full of balloons. The balloons had words printed on them, the words of famous women.
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."
"The activity of knowing is no less closely connected with our sense of reality and no less a world building activity than the building of houses."
The first quotation is from Virginia Woolf, the second from Hannah Arendt. They are joined by others, a catholic selection of the great and good that can include both Gertrude Stein and Rosa Luxembourg. The balloons are gone now, taken by visitors to the gallery and then carried home with them, or else released outside. The piece is by Austrian artist Johanna Kandl and is called Speaking in Public. A witty alternative to the kind of inscriptions most commonly associated with public statuary. No irony really in one of the most convincing exhibits being a more or less empty room. Bendetti Bonici's three X-rayed figures, lifesize and adorned with bits and pieces of jewellery -- one holds a metal framed mirror and is caught in the act of combing her hair -- is also worth the effort. It is Webster's skull beneath, or at least the pictorial equivalent of, with an appealing twist of black humour. The vanity of flesh.
The Palace of Arts presents an equally tricky space, though here the complications are a result of the conversion of the former exhibition hall. That at least allows for some amusing juxtapositions. Algerian Ali Al-Amir's pieces of enlarged Capo di Monte, garishly framed, pieces of suburban camp devoid of irony, hang opposite nine bland, white (porcelain?) heads that lie in pyrex bowls on the floor. Their creator is French. They are terminally cool. Perhaps there is something in the hanging policy after all. But then in the adjacent room is a piece by Sylvia Reyes. The blurb stuck near the door is worth quoting in full.
"A rectangular bed filled with earth or sand which is totally flat where bodyshapes are placed in a spontaneous manner creating a silhouette which will be highlighted through rays produced by a fluorescent dark neon light. It will be the converted art in the aura of each volume offering its own message mediated for me and for each of the spectators. Then art will be speaking, free, without controls, being its owner."
The light was off.
