My book signing at Diwan Bookstore
We had a wonderful time last Saturday 6 May at my book-signing to launch Safahat min Muthakirat ‘Atil (Pages from the Diary of an Idler) and ‘Atil bi Rubat ‘Anuq wa Saa’t Sadr Thahabiya (Idler with a Necktie and a Gold Breast Watch) at Diwan Bookstore, Zamalek. Many thanks to my old friend, Egyptian author May Telmissany, who spoke at the signing, and to all the guests who attended. I enjoyed answering your questions and speaking with you about my books!
Introducing my two new books-Safahat min Muthakirat ‘Atil (Pages from the Diary of an Idler) and ‘Atil bi Rubat ‘Anuq wa Saa’t Sadr Thahabiya (Idler with a Necktie and a Gold Breast Watch)
Author, and friend, Professor May Telmissany introduces my books to the audience at Diwan Bookstore, Zamalek, Cairo
Audience at the book signing event
Diwan Bookstore co-founder, Hind Wassif, participates in the Q & A session about the books!
From the book signing event
Author Somaya Ramadan actively participates in the discussion
Professor May Telmissany reads out excerpts from the book.
From the book signing event
Making my debut as an author
Cairo 1995, photo by Veronique Audergon
I’m launching my first works as an author at a book-signing in Diwan Bookstore, Zamalek, tonight: Safahat min Muthakirat ‘Atil (Pages from the Diary of an Idler) and ‘Atil bi Rubat ‘Anuq wa Saa’t Sadr Thahabiya (Idler with a Necktie and a Gold Breast Watch). They’re autobiographical works in which I’ve compiled fragments of prose and line drawings from my private journals that I’ve kept since the mid-1990s, capturing literary “snap-shots” of people and places in my life. As an image-maker, it’s all about freezing a moment in words rather than in a photograph or on canvas. After 25 years as an artist, I felt it was time to share my stories in writing, this new tool of expression. For me, the obsession to write is the same as the obsession to paint.
It took many years to decide to publish these highly personal reflections and drawings, created at key “moments of choices” in my life. I wrote the journal that became Safahat min Muthakirat ‘Atil in 1995, the year I decided to leave clinical medicine to pursue a career in the arts. I was at a crossroads, making a series of difficult decisions, and also in a challenging love relationship. Writing was the best therapy, exactly like divulging secrets freely to oneself. My second book, Atil bi Rubat ‘Anuq wa Saa’t Sadr Thahabiya, is taken from my journals of 1998 to 2002, when I was working in marketing and advertising to finance a maturing art practice. In this book, I explore corporate and contemporary culture and also my travels, and the prose has a distinct rhythm: observation, reflection, questioning. The line drawings in both books were always made at the same time as the original prose, sometimes linked, and sometimes entirely separate.
I developed the character of the “idler” to narrate both books. He represents a certain part of my mind, the observer and commentator. Through his eyes, we see brief moments in time where there’s always a location, a self and an action. Like a camera moving fluidly between separate rooms, the idler’s perspective links the different scenes. He’s an adventurer at heart, an experimenter in life, audacious in his decisions, sarcastic by nature and ironic in his perceptions. He’s someone who treats every space or location as transient. For me, he represents the vagabondism of the artist, outside society’s norms. I’ve never been an idler, never been doing nothing. But I’ve always been an idler in my mind, with this type of observation and ironic reflection. When finalizing these manuscripts for print, I discovered I have enough material for two more books, also narrated by the idler, and those are my next literary projects this year.
The Opening Night!
The opening of “On Codes, Symbols and Stockholm Syndrome” at the SafarKhan Gallery in Zamalek, Cairo.
From opening night
From opening night
“On Codes, Symbols and Stockholm Syndrome” lasts until the 27th of January
Sneak Preview: On Codes, Symbols and Stockholm Syndrome
Opening at SafarKhan Gallery, Zamalek, Cairo tonight!
Khaled Hafez supervises hanging of Stockholm Elements, 200 X 120 cm
..Discussing art work
… and adding final touches to Stockholm Star & Goddess
Behind the Scenes
Final touches to one of two Oum Kalthoum paintings that go on show at Safarkhan next week.
To me, Oum Kalthoum represents the secular, progressive Egypt of her time. She is the symbol of that particular time and space.
On Codes, Symbols and the Stockholm Syndrome – culturally loaded symbols in a contemporary world
Stockholm Hathor , 120 x 80 cm
In my latest painting project, On Codes, Symbols and the Stockholm Syndrome, I use symbols that are political and social at the same time. I draw on my interest in French philosopher Jean Baudrillard who, in his seminal research of cultural specificities, wrote about simulation and simulacra, or simplistically, the fake and the authentic. Baudrillard argues that in a world where the original is always preceded by the sign, and where the simulated copy has superseded the original, reality becomes a meaningless concept. Taking this idea as my starting point, I explore notions of what is real, and what is unreal, in a contemporary culture loaded with codes and symbols of faith, ideology, wealth, subjugation and the quest for power.
My use of symbols is not new. In all my work, I attempt to discover what it means to be Egyptian. I grew up in an Egypt that was far more secular and progressive. Throughout my career, I have used media propagated symbols as a way of breaking the barrier between East and West, past and present, sacred and ephemeral. In the end, I believe that everything is ‘sellable’ and ‘package-able’ including Faith.
I generally work on symbols of male (using body-builders) and female (using fashion top models). I always build on the idea of the perfection of the human body; the idealization and the idolization of the human body. I use cutouts from magazines and digitally rework them, then manually work them into the canvas to create my narrative. Sometimes they’re very obvious, or critically speaking “literal”, at other times they’re not (and you need to take a closer look) and are more metaphoric.
I suppose what differs in this new work is the way in which I use fewer and oversized symbols on my canvases, giving them a new significance as regards to their previous appearances in other painting projects.
Two Stockholm Hathors & One Nute 250 x 200 cm
Hathor, the ancient Egyptian ‘cow’ goddess: maternal, sensual, and sometimes sexual. She symbolizes a ‘space’ that brings (holds) people together in one place – she is giving, she is even sacrificing her own flesh for people to eat and live. I refer to her as ‘she’ and not ‘it’ as she is the sacred feminine. I use a representation of the animal (in this case, a cow) metamorphosing the form into a simulation of an ancient Egyptian idiogram or pictograph. I place the Ma’at crown on her head to symbolize justice. I use a figure of the actual animal and not the actual ancient Egyptian god to avoid clichés.
Sekhmet, the lioness and ancient Egyptian goddess of war. I use her quite a lot. She appears in many different ways in this project. She dominates her space reminding us that the sacred feminine, capable of such boundless generosity and sacrifice, is equally capable of bloodshed and war.
Eagle of Saladin (SalahEldin): this is a newly introduced symbol that occurs sometimes in newer canvases – representing the present state of the country and criticizing those currently in power.
Islamic star: it symbolizes the current prevalence of the right wing religious streams of thought.
Runners: these uniform images of human figures running insinuate the idea of flight; flight of identity, flight of power, flight from faith to agnosticism and from agnosticism to faith. The runners may also refer to the notion of forced migration, both in the physical literal and the metaphoric senses; the escape to another place/space/reality.
Stockholm Hathor Rain 200 x 120 cm
Colour dripping: the thousands of colour drips all over the canvases for me represent the diversity of people in Tahrir Square, all coming from different walks of life. The surface of the canvas is a field of expression, just like Cairo’s streets and squares, and the ‘dripping’ is the protestors and demonstrators all expressing their different lives and their intermingling narratives.
Stockholm kalsoom 250 x 90 cm
My New Project: Codes, Symbols, and Stockholm Syndrome
Codes, Symbols, and Stockholm Syndrome is the title of my new painting project that goes on show on the 10th of January 2012 at the SafarKhan Gallery in Zamalek, Cairo.
In my paintings, I am consciously distancing myself from the events I lived in Tahrir Square, allowing myself the physical and mental space to contemplate and produce accurate reflections and impressions of all that I experienced.
