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| by Farghali |
To
empathize with a city, best way is to get to know a diversified range of local
people. I got to see a different glimpse of Cairo again, the artistic side of
the city in my visit this week. Last time I did this, it was few months after
revolution and streets of Cairo was not a safe place to walk around. So we
confined ourselves with a co-worker who played my guide to the busy and small
streets of Zamalek; and sat and had several conversations with art gallery
owners. They were apprehensive two years ago; joyful of the movement yet again
very concerned on potential self censorship, impact on artists freedom, and of
course loss of business. One lady speculated on Turkey versus new Egypt and
eventual fate of women; another gallery owner talked about his top clientele
being in jail. Yet again we looked through fantastic paintings and sculptures
awaiting to be purchased in small rooms piled.
This is where I met Farghali’s
and several other contemporary Egyptian artists’ paintings. What provoked me to
take the art journey at the first place was the fascinating Khaled Sourour
exhibit at the Nile City Fairmont, ‘al ahwal’—(I wonder if it would mean state
of the world as we would call it in Turkish?) which struck me as fiercely
local yet with a cartoonish vividness screaming.
So this
week on my last night in the city, I went to see few exhibits, and breathed
Zamalek’s vibrant young scene again. There were many more American style café
house turned bookstores with mostly university students chatting and typing on
their computers. I am so struggling to recognize Cairo without any tourists
since revolution. We had dinner among locals at the AbuSid. Zamalek is a
bohemian neighbourhood with real old but once upon a time stylish apartments
housing small cafes, bookstores, art galleries, antique stores and lots of
interesting people. Neighbourhood is so
lovely and interesting that it is a mystery how it managed to stay this way
without turning into a wildly expensive new Soho.
In one of
the galleries I visited, I came across a breathtaking Farghali, where he
painted a pink future of Egypt connecting its glamorous past to today. And I
got to see his works from a just closed exhibit being wrapped with plastic and
getting ready to be sent abroad. The feedback was buyers mostly moved away to
Dubai or London, but kept ordering paintings from abroad. One exhibit I saw was
a woman painter’s ink paintings with fishermen silhouttes from a small town on
the Mediterenean coast. But she could not help paint on the current state of
affairs in Egypt. She had one painting with hundreds of heads under Egyptian
flag stating people were one nation under one flag.
It was
difficult being in Cairo and walking in the corridors of Egyptian museum
without the usual hustle; not being able to take a solo stroll in Khan Khalili.
But I got to appreciate Cairo’s new loneliness. New Cairo is beautiful because
to me it signifies a new resolve. Be it in art or the business community local
folk keep creating; innovating; dealing; talking and thinking; just like they
did in past five thousand years. As long as the Nile keeps running through it.