CAIRO: It might be easy to assume that local sculptor Ahmed Askalany is a dour nihilist.
His new show entitled “Sound Body, Sound Mind, which runs at the Mashrabia Gallery until October 12, features hulking slabs of clay, iron and plastic and explores themes such as isolation, betrayal and the loss of individuality.
However, in person, the 29-year-old artist is gregarious and giddy.
Dressed in faded jeans, sandals and a beige T-shirt, Askalany tells The Daily Star Egypt that his art simply imitates life.
“These are things which I see on the street, he says, standing in front of his creations.
For example, a quartet of polyester figures called “Spoiled, exemplifies the strained – and often predictably humorous – relationship between a mother and her pampered child. In the first of the four sculptures, the mother carries the child, but soon grows tired and forces the child to walk by himself.
“The son doesn’t like this situation, so he begins to throw stones at her, says Askalany, who is also a father, while pointing to the sculptures.
The final scene shows the mother smacking the boy with a green sandal.
“Yes, says Askalany, “it’s supposed to be funny.
Still, it’s not always easy to tell.
All of the figures have hulking, corpulent bodies with exaggerated features like massive thighs and thick arms. They all have faded, blotched colors (provided by Askalany’s wife Suzanne) and a weathered look, which makes them resemble something an archeologist might find deep in the dirt of an ancient dig site.
Despite the primordial look of the figures, however, they represent very modern topics, like the loss of one’s humanity, says Askalany.
One section of the show – which presents a man armed with a knife hugging another man – tackles the modern sense of friendship, where so-called “friends gossip.
“The knife isn’t to kill, but it shows how your friends can hurt you by talking about you behind your back, he says.
Other themes included a sense of dislocation and the loss of intellect and spirituality.
“It’s not a correct body, he says of the figures in the show, which took a year to complete. “They have huge legs, huge arms.it’s a corrupted body.
“They’re so heavy, they can’t move – they can’t do anything, he says.
“People have a small, beautiful thing in their hearts, but everyday, this beautiful thing shrinks [and] they lose it.
And perhaps the most defining feature of Askalany’s creations is the tiny, nipple-like heads – an obvious metaphor. “People don’t think, he says. “They forget to use their brains.they’re just big bodies, walking.
This sentiment is a recurrent theme in Askalany’s work, and is most evident in the show’s piece de resistance, a collection of 13 figures entitled “Life. In it, the one meter-tall figures stand heavily facing forward. There’s no communication between them and no interaction. In fact, the only thing tying each of the figures to the others is their shared physiology.
Askalany says this relates to an often-lost sense of individuality in today’s world. “I think that all the people in life act in the same way, but they all have small differences – but they don’t notice them, he says.
Askalany himself is certainly an individual.
He spent his formative years on a farm in the Upper Egyptian town of Nagattammady. It was there – playing in the dirt, mud and clay – that he discovered his love for sculpting the raw dirt into whatever his young imagination could conjure up. By the age of 13, the fledgling artist had decided that he would make sculpting his career. After finishing high school, Askalany packed up his bags and moved down the Nile to Cairo.
“It was a dream, he says. “I left my family [and] I didn’t know anyone in Cairo. Some people start from zero – I started from below zero, he says.
Mashrabia Gallery8 Champollion St, Downtown Tel: 578 4494/010 1704554Ramadan hours: 11 a.m. – 2.30 pm; 8 – 11 p.m.
