WATANI International
14 February 2010
Since it is involved with sentiments of good and beauty, art is a means of assuring worthy social values, and it is an invitation for freedom. “I am Egyptian” is the motto used by the Association for Preserving Egyptian Heritage (APEH) for its activities in 2010, which began with an exhibition on the same theme held at the Cairo Opera House.
The 40 Egyptian male and female artists who contributed to “I am Egyptian” highlighted through their works the danger of division threatening Egypt, especially as exemplified in the recent killing of Copts in Nag Hammadi. The exhibition was primarily concerned with battling attempts to obliterate Egypt’s identity by substituting the original mildness and tolerance of the Egyptian character with a mindset prone to violence in the name of Islam.
Red stains on a white gown
Watani talked to Maged al-Raheb, head of the APEH, who said that the exhibition was just the first of a series of activities planned for 2010 with the purpose of advocating citizenship rights, and reinstituting the Egyptian identity with its famed tolerance and acceptance of the ‘other’. The works in the exhibition, he said, were concerned with Egyptian heritage, nature, or events.
“In one of the paintings,” Raheb said, “Fifi Khattab depicts Egypt as a pretty woman in the foreground while other fully-veiled women in black fill the background. She wished to send a clear message that the progressive, non-veiled Egyptian would eventually prevail while other trends of revisionist thought would ultimately fade.
“Inas Salem, a Muslim artist, was so moved by the Nag Hammadi incident that she withdrew her original contribution to the exhibition and contributed another which she had painted in a matter of 24 hours to express her sentiments. The new painting was dominated by red, the colour of blood, over a white backdrop. It is the blood that stains the white gown of Egypt.”
Mr Raheb said that most of the participant artists expressed a wish for the exhibition to travel to Nag Hammadi. “We accordingly wrote to the public culture palace of Qena asking them to host the exhibition, and to the Ministry of Transportation to allocate a carriage to carry the paintings,” he said
Banned in Islam
Watani asked Mr Raheb why was art in Egypt retreating inside the art galleries, away from the people “Unfortunately, the abolition of drawing and music lessons in schools is killing the spirit of creativity in children,” he sadly answered. “Four years ago,” he recalled, “one of the deans of the Faculty of Fine Arts, who was an Islamist, abolished sculpture from the arts school on the pretext that statues are ‘banned’ in Islam. Ever since, the volume of sculpture artwork has visibly shrunk. Sadly, this exhibition displays a single piece of sculpture.”
The participating works in the exhibition involved various mediums: oil, graphic, brass, textures, mosaic, and ceramic.
Watani toured the exhibition, which comprised various arts inspired by the rural and urban Egypt; expressing the famed Egyptian kindness, unity, and peace especially as depicted in the dovecots which dot the Egyptian countryside.
The artist Magda Girguis, professor of artefacts at Helwan University, said that she participates with three different paintings on the same theme; the sun shining on all neighbouring, intertwined village houses, embracing all in warmth. One of her works, executed on natural leather and coloured with shoe polish, depicts a young girl with Pharaonic features carrying on her head the crown of the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis’ and holding mosques and churches surrounded by houses, wheat, and date palms. All these are symbols of life.