In the current exhibit at the American University in Cairo, AUC’s graduating class of arts students are deconstructing the stereotypes of their own lives, in a variety of well-done projects.
The exhibition, titled “Arts and Parts — 23:5,” is held at the Sharjah Art Gallery at AUC’s main campus in New Cairo.
Featuring 23 pieces, one by each of the graduating seniors, the works are the culmination of each student’s four years of study. The projects were overseen by AUC Professors Brian Curling and Sarah Rifky.
“They take this class… and in this class they use all the knowledge they’ve accumulated throughout,” Mariam Mekiwi, the Sharjah Art Gallery’s coordinator, told Daily News Egypt.
Curling, a working artist, focused more on the artistic side of the project, while Rifky, who also works as a curator, tried to bring in a more job-focused perspective.
“That way they’re prepared to go in either direction,” Mekiwi said.
While each piece has its own voice, Mekiwi said some definite themes emerge from the exhibition.
For example, “There are a lot of feminist pieces,” she said.
One piece entitled “I’m no Feminist” by Leena Sadek shows a photograph of three women, their faces painted blue and gold. On the floor in front of them is written a diatribe in Arabic, inscribed with Latin characters and numbers.
“The text on the floor represents the deconstruction of such common beliefs by allowing the audience to step on and walk over the degrading comments,” Sadek said.
Another notable piece, which takes up an entire wall on the first floor, is “Because We’re All Going to Change the World During Assembly Hour” by Dina Abdel-Aziz.
Centering on a photocopy of her AUC ID; Abdel-Aziz branches outward, linking the varied aspects of AUC life in a critical way.
“We’re all a big bunch of complainers at AUC,” she said, in the piece description, she writes: “We moan a lot about services, yet rarely do anything to make a difference. But when we do, we like to make sure it’s at our own convenience. We have no concept of sacrifice or perseverance.”
One entire section of the wall is plastered with complaints about AUC’s bus service, e-mailed to the administration by Abdel-Aziz herself. Other targets of Abdel-Aziz’s piece include the online-only support of Mohamed ElBaradei, Blackberry addiction, and grade inflation at AUC. “Students want the A’s without the hard work,” she writes at one part of the piece.
Adopting a similar strategy is Therese Ananian’s “My World Is Better than Yours,” a multimedia piece reflecting on the detachment of upper-class Egyptians from their own culture. A gold cast filled with accoutrements of upper-class life (Starbucks cups and pastry containers from Cilantro), the model plays a loop of noise and music from attached headphones.
“Many private school students and graduates choose to live in a cultural bubble,” Ananian said in her piece description. “It is unfortunate that those who have been afforded this opportunity… are ignorant of their own culture and context.”
Another piece on the same topic is “I Know,” by Aya Shorosh. Lamenting that “tourists coming from all around the world know more about our history than we do,” Shorosh intersperses photos of a marked up Lonely Planet with the bolded statement “No one told me to go!! Why should I?”
Other notable works included Mariam Sadik’s “Still Evolution,” showing a woman continually shifting between a veiled lady and a scantily-clad party girl, while a loop of Egyptians talking about marriage plays in the background, as well as “Hassan the Cunning,” a comic book by Marwan Imam about a man fighting Satan and a djinn army attacking from the spirit world.
One particularly potent piece is “Little Do We Know,” a multi-media piece by Salma Swellem. Composed of four layers of photos focusing on several Egyptians, including an AUC student, an elderly Egyptian man, and a woman wearing the niqab, the piece comprises audio recordings listened to while standing in between photographs of the subjects. The whole piece finishes with a painted portrait of each subject. The effect is striking.
Almost all of the pieces in the exhibition seem to be dealing with some form of identity crisis — an understandable theme, considering all the artists have just left the safe confines of academia.
Shady El Noshokaty, an art professor at AUC and a working artist himself, told Daily News Egypt he was glad each graduate had found a way to make their work personal.
“Some of the works have made a very big achievement,” he said. “The quality of the work on the conceptual level is much better than what I’ve seen before.”
“I can see there is a personal perspective,” he said.
“Arts and Parts — 23:5,” presented by the American University in Cairo Department of Performing and Visual Arts. Sharjah Art Gallery on AUC’s New Cairo campus. Open Sunday-Thursday, 10 am-7 pm until June 29. Tel: 2615 1221.
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Therese Ananian’s “My World Is Better Than Yours.”
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