In progress:
Job hunting
Angiolamaria Conti Guglia first arrived in Cairo on a three-months scholarship to undertake a comparative study of European hand-made paper and papyrus in 2000. A job with Giuseppe Fanfoni's mission, restoring the Mevlevi Architectural Complex in Al-Helmiya Al- Gedida, initially facilitated the decision to stay on. Conti Guglia was already a painter when she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania, Sicily, her birthplace, in 1995. She trained in the hand-made paper master Franco Conti's cartiera in 1997, earning a certificate in art restoration in 1998, while continuing to paint, design and take photographs. A founding member of a trio of Sicilian female artists called "Isole" (Island), she has exhibited 15 times in Italy and once in Cairo.
Now I am unemployed, I hope I'll find a job soon. Right now I am designing the cover of a CD for my favourite music group, Westelbalad. So sometimes I work as a graphic designer, and I have my computer and scanner and everything so I can work from home. I want to do more of this. For example, I want to prepare an art catalogue.
I am also painting, because I want to get together a new solo exhibition. But to talk about what I'm doing in this department is impossible. You must see for yourself. It is not really figurative, it is not really abstract; it is partially this and partially that but, in the end, of course, it is its own, integrated thing. Who are the painters that I like. Well, Münch. My final thesis was on this man, I find him extremely stimulating. Of the old painters, let me think. Caravaggio. Leonardo. But there was someone modern besides Münch, someone I like equally, but whose name escapes me. I was talking about him to a friend of mine the other day. He was on the tip of my tongue. No, I don't remember him.
I was painting before I joined the Academy of Fine Arts, my mother was a painter and she taught me to paint. But I was not professional. I did free-lance photography and such things. Then people said, you paint very well, why don't you study painting? So I did...
Tomorrow I am auditioning for a modern dance show, here at the Hanager, with Walid Aouni. Because I love to dance. I was always dancing in Catania before I joined the institution but at one point it was a matter of deciding one way or another and I chose to paint.
I want to work as an interior decorator, too. Because it is something that, while still a little similar to restoration, allows you a lot more artistic freedom. To be a good restorer, you see, you have to cancel your soul. You can't add your touch or try out your style, you have to stick with the ancient, the original style. But in interior decoration, I would be able to introduce my fantasy into the space, incorporate, however obliquely, my view of things. So this is one of my plans.
And then the other day I was thinking, I'd learn how to make a Web site. This is something I want to do. Because in this day and age I think it's easier to find a job if you can work with computers.
The thing is that I like to work in different fields, even if they are all related to art. What's good about this is that it gives you some space. If you work in management, for example, and you lose your job, you won't be able to do anything else, because the only thing you know how to do is to be a manager. But when you have an artist's soul, there is a far broader range of things you can do -- and they are all related. Unlike a manager, I feel I have the freedom to function in several different disciplines, all the same context -- of art. And the point is if you do something with your heart, if you love what you do, you will end up doing it well. But if you're just doing it as a job, something you have no feeling for, it will never be as good. I was selling cars for seven months before I joined the academy, but at the end of that period I said khalas. I became absolutely certain that I couldn't stay in a normal job like that, I'd go crazy.
The problem, of course, is that it is very difficult to live on art. And my painting is difficult in the sense that it's not intended as simple decoration, which is the kind of art most people want to buy. And I decided very early on that I wouldn't prostitute my art. Of course, if someone wants to buy a painting of mine, for what it is, that's different. And it's different with graphic design and photography, because you speak with people and you have an agreement, a deal. But I won't prostitute art.
I like living in Egypt, but what I want to do is perhaps go to Spain -- where there's a mixture of Arabic, European and Mediterranean culture -- and spend half of the year in Egypt and half in Spain. I love the colours of Africa, the skies. And my only problem with Cairo is that it is too polluted, and there is no sea. In Cairo you can find everything, but it's in my character to go to baladi places. I adore Old Cairo, for example. Now that I've started to speak in Arabic people have taken in me in, they are far more pleasant to me. And that suits me perfectly because I don't want to be a tourist, I always want to get into the culture. I had been to Morocco before coming, but it was only a visit. And it was difficult at first to live in a Muslim country. But, you know, in Sicily we had Arab domination from AD 900 to 1100, and once you begin to understand what's going on, it doesn't turn out to be all that different after all.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 23 - 29 January 2003 (Issue No. 622)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/622/cu2.htm