The McDonalds next door is the only identifying feature on this café’s map of the Downtown neighborhood. Nestled in an inlet off of Sherif Street, Café Kunst Gallery offers an alternative escape.
For passers by, the café’s exceptionality lays in its location – one would be hard pressed to find a similarly air-conditioned, Wi-Fi equipped European café along the crowded Downtown street lined with clothing shops and antique stores. Indeed, the McDonalds is next best.
With a laptop on hand, you can spend hours in this cozy, two story café that has yet to garner a large daytime crowd. All the while, appreciate the exhibit that lines the walls, grab a book (in Arabic) from one of the shelves of cultural and literary offerings, and accept the soft twist on elevator music.
If you have any questions, the artist is probably the person sitting at the table beside you, and the café’s organizer is at her laptop on the other end.
But beneath the limited, medium priced offerings of hot drinks and juice (the food listed on the menu has been discontinued), there exists a community of art that owner Wisam Hashem envisioned when he arrived in Cairo less than a year ago.
A Danish-Iraqi poet, Hashem sought to create a community of art in the unique atmosphere of a Euro-Arab café. “In its core, it’s a mix between two cultures, said Kunst Art Counselor and General Organizer Dr Doaa El-Desouky.
At Café Kunst Gallery, the European café culture juxtaposes with the communal aspect of Arabic culture, in some cases with awkward results. Tables sit empty where foreigners might be accustomed to work while sipping “American coffee. The music, explained El-Desouky, was a blend of Western classical music and Arabic undertones.
But the cultural mix offers a new venue for Cairo’s art community.
El-Desouky attended the gallery’s opening in December as a guest, and thereafter committed herself to the project. “We feel at home and that really makes us happy, she said.
Kunst has reached out to the art community across the city, but it already has its share of loyal followers. As we spoke on a weekday afternoon, the current exhibit’s artist was gathered with friends at a back table. The teacher of a regular art workshop at the café sat upstairs among a small group.
El-Desouky also described the consistent midnight to 2 am crowd, or the potluck party they held last month where guests each brought with them their favorites dishes.
Meanwhile, the café offers its own contribution to the Cairo art scene.
Art workshops are offered nearly every day, sometimes both mornings and evenings. Each month, the café invites Cairo youth to show their work. And every Friday, the café holds a poetry reading for local poets.
The current exhibition, showing until the end of the month, reflects the café’s distinctive, melding character. In “Melancholia, Artist Yasser Mongy has incorporated himself and his work into the 16th century engravings of Albrecht Durer. Photographs of himself intrude on the images already abundant with the chaos of Durer’s time.
It may be difficult to identify the precise genre of the venue. But art, of all forms, said El-Desouky, is the focus. Even the café’s name reflects its goals: “Kunst is the Scandinavian and German word for art.
Approaching its seventh month in operation, Kunst continues to evolve. What will become of this modest café, only time – and their loyal customers – will tell.
“We are dealing with it as if we had just opened yesterday, El-Desouky said.
For now, they are reworking their food offerings and planning a variety of new events. Hopes to extend their art reach have sparked thoughts of a miniature film festival, where submitted videos might be shown throughout the day.
Perhaps by then the small McDonalds icon will be unnecessary, and Café Kunst Gallery will stand out on its own as a café and as a cultural center of Cairo.
