A connection to nowhere
Negar Azimi looks at one unlikely experience of the war period
If you drove along the road that links Taba and Nuweiba earlier this month, you would notice what appeared to be public art in progress. Move on to the coast, to Castle Beach, and you would encounter the source: 20 artists from Egypt and five continents gathered with nothing more than a mandate to dialogue as part of an arts workshop appropriately entitled Wasla (the word means, literally, "connection" ).
Initiated by Cairo-based independent curator Mai Abul-Dahab and supported by both the UK-based Triangle Arts Trust and the Ford Foundation, Wasla is the latest of platforms intended to foster dialogue in the arts, both regional and otherwise.
"Wasla is not about culture. Instead, it's about people getting to know different arts scenes, putting people into isolation for two weeks and working together in new contexts," Abul-Dahab explains.
Innovative in approach, the Wasla workshop was designed to be about process rather than product. No stipulations surrounding production were imposed, while participating artists were free to engage with the surrounds and with one another as they saw fit.
"Whether something materialised at the end was secondary. It was a simple concept: put people together who share similar interests and there is going to be something strong that comes out of it," said Cairo-based participant Iman Issa.
Doubtless, Sinai's rugged environment served as a rich visual stimulant, while the hyper-isolation it afforded them nurtured the kind of exchange and experimentation at which the workshop aimed.
Alexandrian artist Rehab El-Sadeq's work was built around an abandoned water tank nine kms from the workshop site. Naively inscribed on the tank was a dizzying array of names of women; El-Sadeq had invited neighbouring Bedouin men to write the names of the women in their lives on the tank -- a public monument to gender and under-representation, given added significance by the fact that it is in part constructed out of a container that holds one of the most pervasive symbols of life.
One couldn't help but marvel at Cairo-based Issa's work -- an oversize cube, completely covered in a brilliant glittery gold, noticeably out of context on the side of the main seaside strip of road not far from the workshop site. The cube, an exhaustively prepared nod to flashy indulgence, was an obliquely ironic tribute to the non-existing audience.
Moroccan artist Safaa Erruas's work was particularly provocative, though in wholly subtle fashion. Concerned with the relationship between minimalist subjects, Erruas engaged in a two-part project. In the first, she meticulously wrapped stones found in the surrounding hills in white gauze, suspending them in a quasi-triangular formation. For the artist, this was a way of examining the relationship between the fragile (the gauze) and the less fragile (the stones), the coarse and the smooth, the earthly and the synthetic. The near-triangle signified that this was a work in process, while the suspension served as manifestation of the artist's own state given the limitations of time and space. In a separate, internal space, Erruas suspended dozens of razors with wire. On each razor she had affixed delicate pieces of cotton -- again, an exercise in the creation of contrasts -- this time, internalised in nature.
Also of interest was Argentinean Karina Elazem's work. Elazem used tiny sequin-like pellets to create archetypal mosaics -- images of war, immigration, the geopolitics of oil and the like. The strength of this work lay in the striking incongruence between the delicate bead-like entities and the heavy subject matter they collectively depicted.
Castle Beach, isolated from all things urban, seemed oddly out of place, and time, in the light of recent regional events. Yet the invasion of Iraq was evidenced in the workshop's collective consciousness.
Dutch artist Trudi Maan created two large-scale images in the sand that could be viewed only from the hill above. The images, one of Saddam Hussein and the other of George Bush, were meant to serve as a playing field for football in an endearing if not altogether trite expression of universalities that defy politics and, in this case, fascism.
Also concerned with the construct of war was Indian artist Subodh Gupta's video piece, a comically hypnotic mockery of war born of images taken from combat scenes set to an electropop hymn. In the end, Gupta's piece was held over for private screening, as its comic nature grew potentially explicit for more conservative viewers.
At the end of the two-week period, Wasla drew in the public for one open day. While some artists were visibly absent, others did take time to present their work and their particular experiences to audiences through one of two tours offered.
Undoubtedly an initiative without precedent in Egypt, Wasla served as further evidence that the arts in Egypt are increasingly tied into a global fabric, while also thriving as an independent entity. But perhaps more remarkably, Wasla managed to materialise despite the tumultuous events in the region -- with which it coincided exactly, having been launched on 20 March.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 24 - 30 April 2003 (Issue No. 635)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/635/cu4.htm