City of art? Salonaz Sami and Nader Habib each register an instance of what looks like a mural overtake The Friday Souq: a folk motif; the biggest flee market in town; the place where Cairo dwellers shop for everything, as the saying goes, "from the needle to the rocket"; but a Guinness Book of Records -recognised painting, too? Well, artist Taha El-Kurani has accomplished the feat of turning it into one indeed. A 230 by 140 cm oil painting featuring 2,000 lifelike faces from all walks of life -- to be displayed beneath the Sayeda Aisha Bridge -- as he puts it, "where it belongs". On first approaching the project of painting the souq, Kurani had not anticipated the sheer size of its outcome. "All I wanted," he says, "was to take the market as I knew it and put it into a wall painting." But as he embarked on his weekly visits to watch, observe and study the subject -- in the end these visits were kept up for five years -- Kurani realised how deceptive such a concept could be. He focussed, he says, on the uniqueness of each element within the ocean of life that is the souq, and the genius of his mural is how it combines the seething panorama with a strong sense of the individual: each face has a story to tell, all its own. Students in uniform, an old lady selling dates off a wood plank somehow hinged around her neck, a young woman in a headscarf carrying her newborn, and another with a blue bag of potatoes on her head: the verisimilitude is astounding. As inspired as it is inspiring, the mural is "a modern piece of art carrying past souls". Critics have been quick to praise the beauty and especially the "rarity" of the mural -- modern classical, as Kamal Guwaili puts it: "El-Kurani's mural absorbs the present but does not give up on the essence of the past nor does it squander the treasures of history." For his part critic Ezzeddin Naguib said nothing remotely similar has happened in the Egyptian art scene in 40 years. At that time, he added, murals reflected a sense of the importance of art, which mattered "as much as air and water", and through façades and public loci -- railway stations, for instance -- became accessible to everyone: "El-Kurani managed to capture the pulse of simple Egyptians panting after the bare necessities to the point when you can hear their voices loud and clear out of the paintings." All of which comes through in the 20 hours of souq transactions Kurani videoed by way of preparation. "When I started working," he says, "I would play it in the background; listening to the din of the crowd, I could visualise it all in my head, I could even smell the market as I painted. So in a certain sense it was like painting from life. Everything was real." Completed in nine phases, the mural had at least two false endings: at the close of the fifth and the seventh stage, Kurani thought he was done but felt "something was missing". He only stopped after he started repeating faces and details. The souq, as he describes it, makes up a special world of its own: there Egyptians from all over the country demonstrate their remarkable resilience in the face of adversity; the souq is evidence of the multiplicity and creativity of people: "We may be poor in material terms, but we're rich in spirit and expression." Kurani says he "lived with" every character before depicting it. "But the location of the market was no less important. It is the stillness of the place, the motion of the people." Valued at LE500,000, the mural is not for sale. It is meant, rather, for a public place "where people can interact with it". If the plan to display it underneath the Sayed Aisha Bridge falls through, Qurani will donate it to "any person or organisation who respects the humanitarian aspects of it". At 43, with the mural, the artist has realised a dream of which he first conceived in terms of a puppet stage musical along the lines of El-Leila El-Kebira : a creative eternalisation of the souq. "When I finally put down the brush," he recalls, "it was terribly depressing. For five years I had lived with these people and the place," through photographs and sketches as much as in person, "and it was hard to say goodbye." The mural was shown at the Cairo Opera House until 15 December, along with a smaller nine-metre version. The exhibit also included many of the character studies for the mural in various sizes. *** It is 8pm on Monday, and something is going on at the Sadat Metro Station, a workaday place if ever there was one. Passers by have crowded around a central point, ogling the cameramen, the journalists, the media figures, and listening to guitarist Wael Khedr, founder of the band Flamenca, fill the space with sound. The event? Two murals collectively entitled City of Peace - to occupy pride of place at the station - were being unveiled. The outcome of a particularly exciting collaboration between the Austrian Cultural Centre and the Ministry of Culture, together with the management of the Metro, the murals are the work of young Austrians and Egyptians - with special needs, as it turns out. The brainchild of artist brothers Ayman and Emad El-Miry, students at Cairo University who were particularly upset by the marginalisation of people with special needs, the project aimed to give those hidden talents, useless "blessings of the house" as popular culture will have it, the opportunity to express themsleves just like everyone else. Each glazed ceramic mural is 520 by 200 cm, and they were executed over five days following 10 days of preparation. The project was one of two ideas the Miris proposed to the Austrian Cultural Centre: the first centred around an obelisk or pyramid to be placed on a main sqaure. But it was the mural that found favour with the Austrians, who believed it to be more accessible to a wider range of people. Eventually the required official permits were obtained, and the Culture Ministry - in the person of Mohsen Shaalan, head of the Plastic Arts Department - became involved. Shaalan has praised the spirit of the project, stressing "the need for such experiments" and enthusiastically stating that such open public exhibitions have been "100-percent successful" the world over: a fruitful message, forcefully conveyed. Iris Mostegel, deputy of the manager of the Austrian Cultural Centre, agreed: cultural evenings are mostly attended by elites."But we dream that art would be available to ordinary people, who have no time or money to pursue it. It is the citizens' right to have a taste of fine art, even in an underground station." Engineer Magdy Azab, chairman of the board of the Metro, was likewise keen on sponsoring such initiatives, saying art is the only means to link children from all over the world, with their different languages, cultures and traditions. "This is the concept of peace we seek. The clearest evidence is those young people with special needs, and white hearts--having no negative urges or evil thoughts. The different languages did not prevent them from reaching this wonderful goal, creating a meaningful symbol for Cairo." For his part the Austrian Ambassador Thomas Nader stressed that differences between nations enrich human experience: "Two young Austrian talents with special needs came especially to Egypt to take part--with their Egyptian counterparts--in creating a piece of art. Some people may say they are 'different', but I would say they are 'special' because when you interact with them, you realise how adorable they are. This experiment is a step forward for those children, which reveals hidden beauty in this society. When you see the two murals, you will want to support those special children." In the course of the launch, formal speeches were followed by a remarkable surprise: high-profile cartoonist Mustafa Hussein showing up to take part in unveiling the mural. Applause... It is worth mentioning that Hussein has taken part in a multinational exhibition organised by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and entitled Paint Peace for Me. "Look at the eyes of those young talents; they feel triumph, success and pride before this huge audience. I have never seen such a cheering look before," Samia Fahmy, secretary of the association of the Right to Live, observed.
