The 28th session of the Aswan International Symposium for Sculpture was held from mid January to March 2024, organised by the Cultural Development Fund sector, under chairmanship of Walid Qanoush. The Symposium featured participation of 11 sculptors from Egypt, Spain, Russia, China, and Poland. Artist Akram El-Magdoub was General Commissioner of the Symposium.
Among the sculptors who took part in the symposium were Wiktor Kopacz, Therese Antoine Louis, Qian Sihua, Zeinab Sobhy Hanfi, Sherouk Helal, José Carlos Cabello MIllán, Maged Mekhail, Sobolev Mikhail.
A number of workshops were held by sculptors Merna Eshak, Neveen Khaphagy, and Menna Ahmed Abdelrazek.
Egypt’s Culture Minister Nevine al-Kilany, paid a visit to the symposium and met the sculptors. She highlighted the ministry’s keenness to provide the necessary resources for the success of the symposium.
For their part, the sculptors expressed their happiness to take part in that international event on the land of Aswan, which they described as a place “where civilisation and art meet”. Dr Kilany praised the efforts that went into organising that artistic event, and stressed the role of the arts in creating constructive communication between peoples of the world. “The history of the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium has made it one of the most important art forums in the Middle East,” she said.
Aswan is a city of magical beauty that sits on the east bank of the River Nile some 800km south of Cairo, basking in the serenity of the Nile and the rugged hilly terrain that embraces it. The region boasts a charming combination of Nubian and Egyptian cultures.
The art of sculpting has been known in Egypt since predynastic times. Ancient Egyptians perfected the art, masterfully carving the hardest stone, such as diorite, granite and basalt. Even though it steadily declined since the Arab Muslims conquered Egypt in the 7th century—Islam is inclined to see statues as idols—the art saw a revival in the 20th century as Egypt moved into an enlightenment era.
In 1908, the School of Fine Arts was established in Cairo, and has ever since turned out generation after generation of talented young artists. Among those who excelled and carved their names in the history of sculpture was Mahmoud Mukhtar (1891 – 1934) who is famous as Egypt’s foremost sculptor and whose statues grace squares in Cairo and Alexandria. His famous Nahdet Masr (Egypt’s Renaissance) statue, featuring an Egyptian peasant woman raising one hand and looking into the horizon while the other hand rests on a rising sphinx, stands majestically on the Nile bank in Giza, marking the beginning of the wide palm-lined boulevard that leads to Cairo University, Egypt’s first university founded in 1908.
Following Mukhtar’s Egyptian-inspired creations came those of another talented generation that included Mahmoud Moussa (1913 – 2003), Abdel-Qader Rizq (1912–1978), Gamal al-Segeiny (1917 – 1977), Sobhy Girgis (1929 – 2013), and Adam Henein (1929 – 2020).
It was Henein’s dream of reviving the art of sculpture on hard rock that gave birth to the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium (AISS). The dream materialised in 1996 when he collaborated with former Culture Minister Farouk Hosni to found the the Symposium which he headed to his last day. It was fitting for this annual event to be held in Aswan, a city that since antiquity has been famous for its granite quarries.
The international symposium was meant to create a new world of vibrant splendour. It has no specific theme; artists are given technical advice and complete freedom to sculpt what they wish.
The works of the Symposium are exhibited in a permanent display, the Aswan Sculpture Park. There are now more than 200 statues of various sizes displayed on the high plateau in the flow of a waterfall overlooking the lake between Aswan and the High Dam, making thus full use of the magnificent landscape.
Watani International
1 April 2024