Hail, Re

Ali Guindi encounters a circus of light

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A resident of Cairo since 1999, British artist Hannah Stevenson -- whose latest exhibition, Circus of Re, closes at the Safarkhan Gallery this week -- produces the kind of visual art that puts you in a life-loving mood. A kind of plastic equivalent to aphrodisiacs, the paintings have a vivacious, energetic quality that goes beyond mere flair: an intensely personal sense of "joie de vivre", as she puts it: "I don't take my art too seriously -- it is not very heavy, not intellectual or conceptual, nor political-ideological. I don't have time for all that. I am a squared and dogged artist," she laughs, "not the kind that sits in a café smoking and talking about politics."

A dawn-riser since the age of 13, Stevenson starts working as soon as she wakes up, not finishing until sunset. "If you live life with light for guidance," she explains, "you can see beauty in everything. Light," she continues, "can enhance your soul. Every day I look for colour, for tone, for a great moment of understanding light. My head can hold up to 22 slides and when I go back to the studio I just get them out of my head and into the metal very quickly -- a frivolous technique -- three minutes for the first layer, and three for the second." Her grand aim is to restore joy to simple things -- things people have taken for granted, "the great things in life", as she calls them, like light: people point to a figure or a landscape, even a shadow, failing to see the light that makes it visible. "I don't want the viewer to walk away depressed," Stevenson goes on. "There is so much unhappiness around I think as artists we should show people the great heart of God, the bigness of God and of life -- through the interior light of the Ibn Toloun Mosque, birds migrating across the Nile, the circus, children, and sweets. You can get so much joy from the simple things in life -- you don't need a DVD to make you happy," she goes on sarcastically. "You can get dental floss..."

The collection comprising Circus of Re is, on the surface, simply the depiction of a circus performance in Luxor. Stevenson waxes lyrical about how "incredibly colourful and full of energy" it is: "I just thought it would be a light relief against the backdrop of heaviness and concern. It delivers everything I think of as the antithesis of what we are expected to feel. It is all light, colour, humour -- a progression of life, of brightness, of the need for emancipation and laughter, of the collective family unit going on a day's outing, of grannies taking their grandsons out on a picnic, peanuts, the circus, the need for fresh air -- something all generations can enjoy."

Was it the sun that brought this child of light to Egypt? "I am a chaotic personality," she replies. "I just thought Egypt suited my character." Something in her soul "clicked", she says; she felt the country was "a hidden jewel", and criticism of it has never since ceased to bother her: "I think Egyptians have a very good understanding of how to live life." A mere symptom of fascination with the East, this: "The secular permissive society [of England as much of the West] has taken such a tremble. Everybody is pushing everybody around. Family values have disappeared, it is the me society. Here I feel like everybody is helping everybody else." Human warmth and sense of humour aside, Stevenson speaks with reverence of Egyptian traditions and her fear of seeing them disappear -- the mosques, churches, crowds; the orange and the carrot, the red of the tomatoes piled up at the souq. "Boulaq," she muses. "But it's heaven. There is so much beauty in Egypt -- you don't know where to start." For love of Egypt, in fact, Stevenson has decided to transport her personal felucca to the Vienna Lake, her next stop. And such love oozes out of her pictures.

Which brings us to the main point to be made in connection with this exhibition: how refreshing it is for an Egyptian to see Egypt through (loving) foreign eyes. Whether viewing Stevenson's paintings or talking to her, questions about perception and interpretation abound: how might Boulaq be identified with heaven? How might secular society result in "despondency"? It is tempting to remember Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist, in which, having been told by his oracle, back in Spain, to seek his near the Pyramids, the protagonist meets his Egyptian counterpart -- and it turns out he has been told to seek his own treasure in Spain...